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■^-^^ 



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i 




ZViBajjazlne of Verse 



VOLUME VIII 

April-September, 1916 

Editedby 
Harriet Monroe 




545 CASS STREET 
CHICAGO 



ConrrllbC lOlA 



PRICE 15 CENTS NO. 

oetry 

AMagazine of Vers 

i i ted by Harriet Monroe 
APRIL 1916 

Ernest RbyB 
Aprfl Domanc* — A BT«toii Night — Sonnetinai Punch and 
Judy— The Wornan o! Sorrow* — Nc«la'« Monuns Song— 
Dpa<}i and <l<r. Jenur. 

I Univ-. ' Howard Mumtord Jones 

j '>' ii>i»— Aphrodite. 

I The V... of Wisdom— The Leader 

Arthur V. Kent 

I Spring Piecis— The Link Clement Wood 

Shakespeare Agnes Lee 

The Hone Thief William Row Benit 

CroM Patch Horace Holley 

Editoha] Comment . . , ... 

Sfaaknpcaia — Sutua fCenini The Second. 

I Reviews 

Ur. Vuefieltri New Book— A Pioneer— Mr. Aldington'i 
Jmacn- 
I Our Contamporariei J — III — Notes 



5431 Cass Street,' Chicago' 

pit 1916 tn Hcrrivl Monnw. All rigbu mi 



mtxf 

A n)^saeutc of Vm< 



Ediier 

Astocioie Editor 
' AtMsory CommUtrr 



Foreign Correspondent 

' Administrative CommiUee 



Harriut Monroe 

Alice Corbin Henderson 

Henrv B. Fuller 

Edith Wyatt 

H. C. Chatfi eld-Taylor 

Ezra Pound 

WiLLLVM T. Abbott 

Charles H. Hamill 



to have great poets TnERE MUST 
BE GREAT AUDIENCES TOO 

Whitman 



SUBSCRIBERS TO THE FUND 



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MrT..Emm*aHod« 




WallRcc Hakfnsn 




Rdviird B. Butler 1 


Mr.. Robert Mtlz 




1 Biyixi Lalhrop 




MBrtin A. Rvfr«n 


•Mrs. Lb Vcme Noyn 
Mn. E. Nonnan Scoic < 


Mr 





m, John Bir 
r. Tnomas D 



CONTENTS OF VOLUME VIII 

VERSE 

Aidis, Mmry: 

A littk Girl. I-XIII 78 

Bmrry, Iris: 

POBMS: 

The FledgUng 187 

ImimHioii 187 

Study ' 187 

Domestic 188 

Double 188 

Town Mouse 189 

Enough has been Said of Sunset MI ! . 189 

Impression 190 

B^ektr, CkariolU: 

Echo 133 

Betui, WiUUm Rou: 

The Hone TUef 17 

Bodtmkeim, liaxmA: 

Skstcbss IN Colob: 

Columns of Evening 73 

Happiness 73 

Suffering 73 

A Man to a Dead Woman 74 

The Window-Washers 74 

The Department Store '75 

Bryson, Lywum: 

To a Certain Fair Lady 185 

Bynna, WiUtr: 



A Tlirush in the Moonlight 300 

A Mocking-bird 300 

The Dead Loon 301 

To No One in Particular 302 

At The Touch of You 302 

The Earth-clasp 302 

He Brought us Clover Leaves 303 

Wisdom 304 / 

EcoeHomo 304 / 

Cmwtin, Madisou: 

The Wood Brook 134 

The Dead Child 135 

CcmkUmg, Etta: 

Summertime, I-X 193 

ComUifU, Bilda: 

Songs. I-\riII 191 

DrinkwaUr, John: 

Invocation 297 

Hill 



Btliol, r. X.; PAOB 
Obsxrvations: ' 

Converaation Galante 292 

L« Figlia Che Piansi 292 

Mr. Apollinax 293 

Morning at the Window 294 

EUlyson, John RegnauU: 

A CoUoqay in Sleep 186 

Pitch, Anita: 

The Faeries' Fool . . . i 236 

GHfith, WiUiam: 

He Forgets Yvonne 298 

Pierrette Goei 299 

HaU, Ruth: 

?UA'raAiN8: 
he Wolf at the Door 233 

The Anniversary 233 

H«rl«r. Snt€tte: 

To a Flower 77 

HciUey, Harac€: 

Cross Patch 23 

Huni, Richard: 

To a Golden-crowned Thrush 68 

Jatus, Howard Mumford: 

Univbrsity Skbtchbs: 

The Professor Muses 7 

Aphrodite 10 

Jurgdionis, KUofas: 

Lament 138 

JCsnl, Arthur V.: 

The ;Wild Honey of Wisdom 13 

The Leader 14 

KnigfU, Lulu W.: 

The Wind in the Trees 184 

L9€, Agnes: 

Shakespeare 16 

Lindsay, Vachd: 

Booker Washington Trilogy: 

I A Negro Sermon: Simon Legree 109 

II John Brown 112 

III King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba 116 

Long, Lily A.: 

He Buildeth His House 183 

The Poet's Part 183 

Lowell, Amy: 

Pyrotechnics. I-III 76 

1777 

I The Trumpet-vine Arbor 219 

II The City of Falling Leaves ^. . 221 

MacKayt, Arvia: 

The Purple Gimy . IQl 



PAOB 

M^mmimi, FrtdtHck: 

SMTifice 181 

Mmmm, Rosalind: 

PoBMS or Happinub: 

Vicion 115 

Fair Weather and I Haiypy 126 

HappineM 126 

A Child'! Grace 127 

Mitseck, Clinton Joseph: 

At Thirty He Sinn of a Day in Spring 230 

Down the Wind 231 

Mimsitrs, Edgar La: 

In Memory of Bryan Lathrop ISO 

MeCniky, John RussM: 

Adventurint 237 

Goldensod 238 

MiduUon, Max: 

Mat in ths Cmr: 

The Newcomers 63 

Love-lyric 63 

Midnight 64 

The Wmow Tree 65 

Storm .............. 65 

TheRedUfht 65 

In the Park 66 

A Hymn to Night 67 

MdOUr, John 5.. Jr.: 

Ravage 296 

Monro, Harold: 

Strange Meetings. I<X 11 r ... 286 

Moor*. T. }sturgi: 

Inac and Rebekah. MI .. . . 2.)o 

Nordsn.PeUr: 

Good Morning I8S 

O'Brien, Jean: 

Praise of Love 227 

Prayer 228 

O'DonnM, CharUs L.: 

Forgiveness ... 72 

PatUrson, Anioinetts DtComrsey: 

SheiU Eileen 69 

Carnage 69 

Payson, Mahdah: 

To My Mountain 295 

Pcmnd, Eara: 

Poems Old akd Nbw: 

The Fish and The Shadow 275 

OAtthis .... .76 

The Three Poets 2/6 

Pagani's 277 

The Lake Isle . . . ... .277 



PAGS 

ImxtreMiooa of FranooU Marie Arouet (de Voluire) I*III . 378 

Homage To Quintiu SeptimiM Florenti* Chrittlanuf I-VI 3S0 

Dans un Omnibiu de Londres 2S1 

Rhys, Enutt: 

POBMS: 

April Romance 1 

A Breton Night 2 

Sonnetinna: Punch and Judy 3 

The Woman of Sorrows 4 

Nesta's Morning Song . . - 5 

Death and The Jester 6 

Rich, H. Thompton: 

Desire 136 

The Drinker 136 

You Came and Went 137 

Roberts, hiary EUanor: 

Moon in the Morning 132 

S4brM-3mUh, Amy: 

Branded 232 

Shatu^ftU, Clara: 
In Summer: 

Device I-Il 122 

JeuneFUle 122 

Pastel 123 

A Gallant Woman ! . ! 123 

Scherso 124 

Starbuek, Victor: 

Night for Adventures 234 

Sterens, Wallace: 

Three Travelers Watch a Sunrise 163 

Tagare, Rabindranath: 

Epigrams 283 

Thompson, Daphne Kieffer: 

Indiana 70 

An Old Song 71 

Untermeyer, Louis: 

Magic 128 

Beauty 131 

Home 296 

Upward, Allen: 

Baldur 55 

Holidays . . . . x 60 

Finis 62 

Warren, Cretchen: 

The Wild Bird 182 

Wilkinson, hiarguerite: 

Summer in Coronado 229 

Wolff, Adolph: 

Firemes. Mil 291 

(vi) 



^v 



SpriBC-PleGe 15 

iWLInk 



PAQB 

15 
15 



PROSE 

H,M 7 . . . . 32 

Statoi RcnuD — The Second, Emtc Pound . . ? 38 

Mr. MaaeSdd't New Book, H. M 43 

Good Friday and Oihn Poenu, by John Ma«efield 



Tkt Mmn against the Sky, by Edwin Arlington Robinson 

iset. /oAfi Goult' 
Imaiu (Hd and New, by Richard Aldington 



Mr. Aldington's Imnget. John Gould Fletcher 49 



OUX COMTBMPOKAKISS, I-III 52 

Down But, H, M 85 

RftViiWB: 

Chicago Granite. H. M 90 

Chicaio Poenu, by Carl Sandburg 

The Independents, Max Michelson 94 

Catholic AffMofotr— 1914-1915 

Two Bdgian PtoeU, A. F 96 

Maurice Maeterlinck, a Critical Study, by Una Taylor 

Pocau by Maurice Maeterlinch, done into English by Bernard 

MiaU 
Poenu of Emile Verhaeren, selected and translated by Alma 

Strettel 
The Cloister, a Play in Four Acts, by Emile \'erhaeren. traniu 
lated by Osman Edwards 

OuK CoNTmroaARiBs: 

A New School of Poetry. A.C.H 103 

The Critic's Sense of Humor 106 

Varioas Views, H, M 140 

Thia Constant Preaching to the Mob, Esra Pound 144 

Notes on the Booker Washington Trilogy. V.L 146 

RjLViaws: -r 

Mr. Masters' New Book. H. M 148 

Scmts and Satires, by Edgar Lee Masters 
The RaiUcals. Max Michelson 151 

Others: An Anthology of the New Verse 
The Brooke Letters, H, B. F 155 

Letters from America, by Rupert Brooke 

COKBBSPONDBNCB : 

I, Katharine Lee Bates 157 

II, Alice Grof 158 

III, A^ed Kreymborg 158 

Ptiat AiHXmcemsnt 159 

How Not to Dolt, H. M 195 

[vUJ 



TIm Rejection Slip, A.C.H 197 

Rubte Daxfo. Salomon dt la Sdva 200 

Rkviswsi 

Shelley in Hie Lettere. B. W, 204 

The LeUers of Percy Bysshe Shelley 
Arensberg and the New Reality, Max Michdson 208 

Idols, by Walter Conrad Arensberg 

Our Contsmporaribs: I-III 211 

corrbspondbnck : 

August Strtbnm, Edward J. O'Brien 213 

The Parting. Lee WUson Dodd 215 

New Banners, H. M 251 

Correspondences, A, C. H 254 

Rbvibws: 

Two Anthologies. B, M 255 

Some Imagist Poets: 1916 

Georgian Poetry: 1913-1915 
New Books of Verse 260 

Cadences, by F. S. Flint. Max Miehelson 

In the Town and On the Road, by Douglas Goldring. Dorothy 
Dudley 

The Middle MUes and Other Poems, by Lee Wilson Dodd. H. M. 

The Jew to Jesus and Other Poems, by Florence Kiper Frank, H . M. 

Today and Tomorrow, by Charles Hanson Towne, H. M. 

The Nameless One, by Anne Cleveland Cheney, H. M. 
The Spirit cf 76 in Poetry 267 

The Spirit of the American Revolution, as Revealed in the Poetry of 
the Period, by Samuel White Patterson 

CORRBSPONDBNCB : 

The Dead Irish Poets: 

I. Padraic Calum 268 

II, Joseph Campbell 272 

James Whitcomb Riley. H, M 305 

Of Edit9rs and PoeU. A. C, H. 308 

Reviews: 

Thomas Macdonagh as Critic. Eva Pound 309 

Literature in Irdand, by Thomas Macdonagh 
The Tradition of Magic. Louis Untermeyer 312 

The Listeners, by Walter De La Mare 
Modem Monologues. i4 my Lowe/i 318 

FlashMghts, by Mary Aldls 
A Parodist. H, B. F 321 

— and Other Poets, by Louis Untermeyer 

Our Contbmporaries: 

A New Quarterly. A.C.H 323 

Artist versus Amateur 326 

Robert Frost's Quality, A. C. H 327 

The r«ew Dial. H. M 328 

What WiU He Do With It? 329 

Notes 53. 107, 161. 217, 273, 329 

fviii 



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mtxy 



APRIL, 1916 



V^^ 



^^H APRIL ROMANCE 


__»<''' , 


^ 




K y' 


^^BIEKI SAW the sunligh' 


[ in a leafy place 




ffW^^y Bathing itself i 


n liquid green ai 


id amber, 


ES!hI^b| Where every : 


Flower had tear- 


i hid in its 


I^H ^I^J petals. 






^^JS^^ And every leaf w 


as lovely with the rain. 



With wondering eyes I saw how leaf and flower 
Held up their hands, and trembled with dcliEht, 
\VhiIc on the gleaming bough the alighting bird 

Shook its wet wings like something fresh from heaven. 

And when it sang, it told how earth to heaven 
Was turned ; and how the miracle of morning 
Had made of leaf and flower a deathless maiden 

To be my mate and teach eternity. 

in 



POETRY: A Magazine of Verse 

She took my hand: I understood each thing 
The leaf says to the flower when, both adoring, 
See like themselves, leaf-shaped and flower-painted, 

The sun descend, to bathe in painted shade. 

She led me out — ^we left the leafy croft. 

And its wet fragrance, for the treeless town ; 
But she picked up a dead leaf in the mud, 

And she found flowers in the children's hair. 

Then she was gone — and I am seeking her: 
And every time at evening when it rains. 
And every time at morning, when the sun 

Bathes in the beauty of that leafy place. 

Or when he looks into an urchin's eyes 
To see if April tears or smiles are there. 
And the wet dust scents summer leagues away, 

I hold my breath — the Eternal Maid returns. 



A BRETON NIGHT 

The winter seal is on the door. 

Three women sit beside the fire 
Silent, and watch their shadows sprawl 
Like sombre wolfhounds on the floor. 

One "Christus," nailed upon the wall, 
Pities the young wife great with child, 

[2] 



Whose mate lies drowned beneath the sea. 
She cannot lell how to bear it all, 

Or live till Nod sets her free. 

When she need not fear the quiclc and dead 
That every nightfall step the stair, 
Awaiting the Nativity. 

Now she will rise in her despair 

To look out through the leaden panes 
Between the wall-bed and the hearth; 
And hear the wind like sea-waves there. 

She docs not know how. in the earth, 

The dark blind seed doth hear the wind, 
And think of death, and dream of birth, 
Aa the window sends the firelight forth. 



Sovnetina: punxh and JLDV 

This is the play of plays. Come, boys, 
Old men, and little girls, and see 
The rogue outdone in roguery, 

And hear his lovely dreadful noise! 

There is a catch in Punch's voice 
When he escapes the gallows-tree, 
That takes the heart outrageously 

And makes the rascal street rejoice. 

This is that antic play that made 

The mummy laugh (when he had blood), 
13] 



I 



POETRY: -I Magazine of Vertt 

That shall outlive the tragedy 
In time of war with sables played : 

The beggar's masque, and gamin's mood ; 
The first, last laugh of comedy. 



THE WOMAN OF SORROWS 

To bed I went for rest, no rest there to find : 
Day might sleep, nor 1 ; midnight waked my mind. 
Oh a heavy wall has sorrow, a gloomy hedge has care : 
They kept me close, kept me fast ; held and bound me there. 

The wind in the keyhole, it whimpered bitterly. 

And 1 got up to open to my crying baby, 

I'm not ashamed to cry myself, but I'm too proud to pray 

To have the only things I've left rolled up and put away. 

That was a babeless woman — Helen of Troy: 
She never knew the sorrow, and never half the joy. 
I pity the poor women that childing never knew. 
And the nestling of the babe, that crying hungry grew. 

Would you take from my bosom the feeling of my child? 
As soon take the curlew, crying from the wild. 
Oh my sorrow for my babe Is become my baby. 
The one they have taken, the other cannot be. 

When you see the dog cast for the ewe in the snow; 
When you watch the mother-thrush, with her nest broke 
below; 

[4| 



The Woman of Sorrows 

Or look in the eyes of the dead that cannot look, 
You may think of my baby and the breast it forsook. 



nesta's morning song 



I lived in the shadow, 

The vesper-moth mine 
That hates the green meadow 

And yellow sunshine — 

The merry sunshine. 

Like one of the host 
That fell out of heaven, 

I doubted, I lost, 

My angels out-driven — 

My archangels seven. 

O sorrow, my raiment, 
An^ trouble, my care; 
You are paid with a payment: 
The Day-dawn is there — 

God's-gold in his hair. 

Now come out of prison, 
And step out of night ; 
And greet him, new risen, 
My Day of delight, 

My lovely delight. 

[5] 



TOETRY; A Mag a 



DEATH AND THE JBSTBIt 

Black crow, art thou come 

For Dagonct's wit? 

It is quick as the light 

Or the dragon-fly's dart. 

It is born in a smile, 

It is bred in the heart, 

It is light, it is laughter. 

It took life when Eve laughed 

At the lion-cub's play ; 

It slept then awhile. 

When her sorrow came after 

With the son of the snake. 

Eve's joy was my mother, 

Not Eve's sorrow ; 

And the bird is my brother 

That sings as he may. 

In the close of my day. 

Lies curl'd up the morrow 

Like the fox in his bed. 

And my wit, if I die. 

Yet shall wake and shall fly — 

Take music and Hve 

When Dagonet's dead. 



16] 



itys\ 

d 



/ 



UNIVERSITY SKETCHES 



THE PROFESSOR MUSES 

Physics Lecture Room—before Class 

I am afraid, O Lord, I am afraid I 

These instruments so curiously formed, 
This dynamo and meter, that machine 
Cunning to grasp and hold with delicate hands 
Your unchained lightnings . . . Lord, I am afraid- 
Here in the empty silence of my room ! 

This lecture hall is oddly like a mouth — 
Myself the tongue in it, myself the voice, 
Shrill, thin across the empty chairs — how queer, 
How skeleton-like appear these empty chairs! 
Blank walls, blank platform (ineffectual things) 
And bleak, bare windows where the startled day 
On tiptoe stands, too lovely to come in. , . . 
A mouth it seems, a maw, huge, grim, slow, sure 
Some day to close and crush me 1 

Lord, Lord. Lord, 
Am I the thing the daylight falters from. 
Spinning my dusty web of dusty words 
To catch the plunging star we call the world. 
Hanging it so a period ? Fool, twice fool, 

17] 



POETRY: J M n g <, z i r, r of F.rsc 

Who spidcr-likc weave cosmic theories 

In gossamer nets to trap the universel 

Spun but to tear a thousand tattered ways 

And hang on every lilac, if a girl — 

A red-lipped, shallow, care-free freshman girl — 

Lau(;h at the sallies of a boy I 

Afraid! . . . 
Problems of sound and light, of light and sound, 
Experiments, materials, theories, 
The laws of motion, problems of sound and light. 
Problems of sound and light. . . . 

And presently 
A gong will ring here like a doomsday bell 
And through these doors, like winds that shake the woods. 
Sons of the wind and daughters of the dawn, 
Eternal, joyous, unafraid, comes youth; 
Youth from a million colored realms of joy, 
Youth storming up the world with flying hair 
And laughter like a rose-red deluge spilled 
Down dawn-lit heavens, burning all the sea! 

Problems of light and sound ! . . . Why, what care they, 
These bright-eyed Chloes of our later date 
For theories of sound — themselves the sound. 
Themselves the light that brightens all the day? 

[8] 



Tht Prt,le„t>r M uiet 



I 



Round every corner flits a flying fool, 
Alluring laughter shaken fancy-free 
In silver bells that break upon the air . , . 
Evoe — evoe! Pan and the nymphs I With lips 
Parted, and sparkling eyes, the young men follow — 
Follow the swift-foot, laughter-loving nymphs 
Whose eye-lids hold the world ! Problems of light, 
Problems of light — I am sick of light and sound ! 



Youth storming up the world ! Hot, eager youth — 
Youth with a question ever on its lips, 
Impatient of the answer! youth with eyes 
Implacable, remorseless, passionless, 
Crying, "I thirst divinely — quench ray thirst!" 
Ciying, "I thirsted and ye helped me not!" 
And brushing past me. Amperes, dynamos. 
Questions of voltage, coils, transformers, watts — 
Shall these things reach them, teach them to be wise. 
Temperate, noble? Surely greater texts 
Lie in the lips and laughter of j'oung girls, 
Who look at me with pity scarce concealed 
And curious wonder — me the dusty spider 
Spinning my web in this obdurate room, 

I While eager tongues can scarcely pause an hour 
From Hpples of speech. 
For wh( 



M\, Lord, I am afr 
*hen 1 think to have them they elude n 

[91 



id! 



POETRY: A Magaxint of Verse 

And when I guess it not, then have I taught. 

Teach me, O Lord, and strengthen mc — Thou knowest 

I am afraid and weak ... 1 am afraid! 



APHRODITE 

I walked among the gray-walled buildings. 
The city girdles them. 
And distant clamors 
Break on the timeless towers as the sea, 
In March, 
Whirls its long lines of sound against the coast. 

Among them the professors walked — 

Stooping men with gla-sses 

And queer ly eager feet. 

Some wore Van Dyke beards, 

And on some the hair was silvered. 

They talked very rapidly and all were laden 

With many books. 

From hall to solemn hall the hurrying students 
Streamed in black lines — 
Youths and maidens chatting endlessly, 
Worn women with drawn mouths, 
And dissatisfied men. 
They were seeking something. 



[101 



Aphrodite 



Seeking, seeking, 

Seeking they knew not what. 

I too passed with them into a building. 
It was crowded with students, 
And they seemed in the dingy light of the hall 
Like spectres of dead youth. 
The walls were drab, 
The bulletin boards by the offices 
And the ugly chandeliers 
Looked dusty in the light ; 
And I wondered what light did in this place, 
Struggling through the narrow panes — 
The lord of life, 
The eternal sun. 

Suddenly in the crowded hall 
I saw her walking toward me, 
The matchless, the miraculous. 
The divine Aphrodite, 

And around her the heedless students swarmed. 
And saw her not. 

Ah, Aphrodite! 
Her body in the crowded way like a pillar of light 
Shone naked and beautiful, 
The silver limbs, the lustrous bosom ; 
Her face was terrible, 

fill 



POETRY: A Magazine of Verse 

Sweet and swift as lightning launched at midnight; 

One arm was raised 

And from her hand, her divine hand, 

She scattered roses, ^ 

Red roses, 

Crisp flakes of kindling fire. 

A murmur of music floated around her 

Like a sunset-colored cloud; 

Her feet, moving, echoed strangely in my hcart^ — 

Eternal singing. 

The centuries were singing; 

The golden-hearted singers of the world 

Were singing with them 

Unutterable song$. 

Th0u dead, thou deathless goddess. 
Sprung of the wind and the wave and the clean, sweet foam ! 
The wild song$ of the moving feet 
Choked into silence . . . 
Ah, Aphrodite! 

The students swarmed again about me. 
Women with drawn mouths, 
Dissatisfied men. 
Seeking something, seeking, 
Seeking they knew not what. 

Howard Mumford Jones 

[12] 



■■V 



THE WILD HONEY OF WISDOM 

To E. L. L. 

Better a thousand times is my friend than the nuts of knowl- 
edge to me. 

She is wise with the wisdom the flower gives to the honey- 
gathering bee. 

The ways of her mind are free to the winds that circle 
infinity. 

My friend is a gardener of joy, and her radiant thoughts are 

seeds 
That soon or late will be blossoming in the green of their 

destined meads — 
She has sown in my heart a music that was sighed through 

moon-lit reeds. 

Frail are her songs from fairydom, and so surpassing sweet 
That in them is the laugh of leaves and the gleam of green- 
shod feet, 
And in and out thread flights of wings with soft and rhythmic 
beat. 

She holds a great enchantment in each white, lovely hand ; 
The days run through her fingers like bright escaping sand, 
And all but grains of loveliness her sanctuary are banned. 

Her feet, so used to wind-sweet ways, for rest were never 
meant. 

[13] 



'Til on a wonder-seeking quest their tireless steps are bent. 
Her soul must be a nomad star with all the heavens for bent 



THE LEADER 



ns for bent. , 



It is but a little thing 

And an easy thing i 

And who may not bi 

sounds ? 

Yea, small things, these. 



e beauty where dream abounds, 
t sail for the shore in restful seas, 
the note of a song 'mid tuneful 



And hope is a lightsome guest when the mind is arrayed in 

And a pleasant task it is to thank God for a granted prayer. 
And the scales that are builded to weigh but the sun-shaft 
bars 
Have hands of air. 



But I. even 1 who am speaking, would be as the steadfast pine 
That clings to a barren rock in the teeth of the whistling 
wind; 
For everlasting reclothing itself with a new green sign — 
Nor look behind. 

Jrlhur y. Kei 



"l\ 



(HJ 



SPRING-PIECE 

The strayed cherry tree, 
Bewildered by red-brick walls 
In the lost by-street, 
Is dusted with green. 

Its white blossoms push 
Long and scented fingers 
Into the liquid air. 

Clouds of white butterflies 
Silently drift, 

Like loosened and breathing petals ^ / 

Seeking the sun. 



^t^j:>^ 



THE LINK 



When the storm-clouds piled between us, 
In the dark and chasmed hour 
When we struggled for a rebirth of our souls 
And of our love for one another. 
One thing held me to you. 

It was not the expanding structures of love 
That we had builded together; 
It was not vows, 

[15] 



POETRY: ^ Magazine of Vent 

Nor inner promises of eternal fealty, 
Nor our common purposes ia life. 
Nor the clenching grasp of passion — 

It was the battered little coffee-pot 
That we had bought together for five cents 
From a ghetto push-cart. 
That would not let me go. 

Clement H'^ood j 



SHAKESPEARE 

Because, the singer of an age, he sang 

The passions of the ages, 
It was humanity itself that sprang 

To life upon his pages. 



He told no single being's tale — there be 

All beings on his pen ; 
And when he made a man to walk the si 

Forth walked a million men. 



„^ 



[161 



THE HORSE THIEF 

There he moved, cropping the grass at the purple canyon's lip. 
His mane was mixed with the moonlight that silvered his 
snow-white side, 
For the moon sailed out of a cloud with the wake of a spectral 
ship, 
I crouched and I crawled on my belly, my lariat coil 
looped wide. 

Dimly and dark the mesas broke on the starry sky. 

A pall covered every color of their gorgeous glory at noon. 
I smelt the yucca and mesquite, and stifled my heart's quick 
cry, 
And wormed and crawled on my belly to where he moved 
against the moon ! 

Some Moorish barb was that mustang's sire. His lines were 
beyond all wonder. 
From the prick of his ears to the flow of his tail he ached 
in my throat and eyes. 
Steel and velvet grace! As the prophet says, God had 
"clothed his neck with thunder." 
Oh, marvelous with the drifting cloud he drifted across the 
skies! 

And then I was near at hand — crouched, and balanced, and 
cast the coil ; 

[17] 



POETRY: ^ jH « 



0/ V, 



And The moon was smothered in cloud, and the rope 
through my hands with a rip ! 
But somehow 1 gripped and clung, with the blood in my 
brain aboil, — 
With a turn round the rugged tree-stump there on the 
purple canyon's lip. 

Right into the stars he reared aloft, his red eye rolling and 
raging. 
He whirled and suniished and lashed, and rocked the earth 
to thunder and flame. 
He squealed like a regular devil horse. I was haggard and 
spent and aging — 
Roped clean, but almost storming clear, his fury too fierce 
to tame. 

And I cursed myself for a tenderfoot moon-dazzW to play 
the part, 
But I was doubly desperate then, with the posse pulled out 
from town, 
Or I'd never have tried it. I only knew I must get a mount 
and a start. 
The filly had snapped her foreleg short. I had had to 
shoot her down. 

So there he struggled and strangled, and I snubbed him 
around the tree. 
Nearer, a little nearer — hoofs planted, and lolling 
tongue — 

[I8J 



d 



^^HUH^^I 


^^^^^H 


^^^^H 


^^^^^^ 


Thr Hon, Tkitf ■ 


^H Till a sudden slack pitched me backward. He reared right | 


^^1 on top of me. 

^H Mother of God — that momen 

^^1 and up I swung. 


! He mis«d mc . . . 1 


^^M Somehow, gone daft completely a 


i clawing a bunch of his 1 


^^M As he stumbled and tripped in the lariat, there I was — up ^M 
^H astride H 
^^M And cursing for seven countiesl And the mustang? Juii ^M 


^^M Crack-bang 1 went the rope: w 
^H then — gods, that ride! 


cannoned off the tree— 1 


^^M A rocket — that's all, a rocket! 1 dug with my teeth and ^M 

^H Why we never hit even the high spots (though I hardly ■ 
^^M remember things). H 
^H But I heard a monstrous booming like a thunder of flapping H 

^H When he spread — well, call me a liar! — when he spread ■ 
^^1 those wings, those wings ! ^| 


^H So white that m>' e\es were blinded 
^H They beat the air into billows. 


, thick-leathered and wide B 
We sailed, and the earth 1 


^H was gone. ■ 
^H Canyon and desert and mesa withered below, with the world. H 
^^H And then I knew that mustang; for I — was Bellerophon! H 


H [i')i 


J 



POETRY: A Magaz 



of I', 



4 



Ves, glad as the Greet, and mounted on a horse of the elder 
gods, 
With never a magic bridle or a fountain-mirror nigh 1 
My chaps and spurs and bolsler must have looked itf What's 
the odds? 
I'd a leg over lightning and thunder, careering across the 
sky! 

And forever streaming before me, fanning my forehead cool, 

Flowed a mane of molten silver; and just before my thighs 

(As I gripped his velvet-muscled ribs, while I cursed myself 

for a fool ) , 

The steady pulse of those pinions— their wonderful fall 

and rise! 

The bandanna I bought in Bowie blew loose and whipped 
from my neck. 
My shirt was stuck to my shoulders and ribboning out 
behind. 
The stars were dancing, wheeling and glancing, dipping with 
smirk and beck. 
The clouds were flowing, dusking and glowing. We rode 
a roaring wind. 

We soared through the silver starlight to knock at the planets' 

New shimmering constellations came whirling into our ken. 
Red stars and green and golden swung out of the void that 

[20] 



The Horse Thief 

For man's great last adventure; the Signs took shape — 
and then 

I knew the lines of that Centaur the moment I saw him 
come! 
The musical-box of the heavens all around us rolled to a 
tune 
That tinkled and chimed and trilled with silver sounds that 
struck you dumb, 
As if some archangel were grinding out the music of the 
moon. 

Melody-drunk on the Milky Way, as we swept and soared 
hilarious, 
Full in our pathway, sudden he stood — the Centaur of the 
Stars, 
Flashing from head and hoofs and breast! I knew him for 
Sagittarius. 
He reared, and bent and drew his bow. He crouched as 
a boxer spars. 

Flung back on his haunches, weird he loomed — then leapt — 
and the dim void lightened. 
Old White Wings shied and swerved aside, and fled from 
the splendor-shod. 
Through a flashing welter of worlds we charged. I knew 
why my horse was frightened. 
He had two faces — a dog's and a man's — that Babylonian 
god! 

[21] 



POETRY: .4 Ma a a 



of Vf 



Also, he followed us real as fear. Ping! went an arrow pa»t. 
My broncho buck-jumped, humping high. We plunged 
... I guess that's all I 
I lay on the purple canyon's lip, when I opened my eyes at 
last — 
Stiff and sore and my head like a drum, but I brake no 
bones in the fail. 

So you know — and now you may string me up. Such was 
the waj' you caught me. 
Thank you for letting me tell it straight, though you never 
couid greatly care. 
For I took a horse that wasn't mine! . . . But there's one 
the heavens brought me, 
And I'll hang right happy, because 1 know he is waiting 
for me up there. 

From creamy muzzle to cannon-bone, by God, he's a peerless 
wonder ! 
He is steel and velvet and furnace-lire, and death's suprem- 

And never again shall be roped on earth that neck that is 
"clothed with thunder" . . . 
String me up, Dave! Go dig my grave! / rode him 
across the siifs! 

tfilliam Rote Btn^t , 



[22] 



CROSS PATCH 

Her ardent spirit ran beyond her years 
As li^t before a flame. 

At fifteen, the tennis medal; at sixteen, the golf cup; 
TTien — the coveted ! — bluest of blue ribbons 
For faultless horsemanship. 

No man in all that countr>-, > 

Whatever his sport, 
But had to own the girl a better man. 
As that she merely laughed — saying that triumph 
Is all a matter of thrill: who tingles most. 
He wins inevitably. 
Half bewilderment, half jest, 
Xhey called her Sprite, those ordinary folk 
Who thought such urge, such instinct of life to joy 
Was somehow mythical. 

And having named her, they no longer thought of her, 
To their relief, as young or old, one sex or other — 
Just herself, apart, a goddess of out-of-doors. 
School boys never dreamed of her tenderly 
As one to send a perfumed valentine; 
But when she strode among the horses in the field 
They pawed the ground. 
No leash could hold a dog when she passed by. 



Then, despite her ardent i 
Ardent as though each momei 



vith time— 
rre a dare 



123] 



POETRY: ^ Ma 



of Ve 



To some adventure of freed muscle and thrilled nerve- 

A fleeter runner overtook her flight 

And bound her tightly in a golden net — 

Hands, feet and bosom; lips and hair and eyes — 

Beauty, beauty of women. 

Or was it she, unconscious what she raced, 

Ran suddenly, breathless, glad and yet dismayed, 

Into the arms of her own womanhood ? 

Which, no one knew, herself the least of all. 

But no more did she fly beyond herself. 

As eager to leave the very flesh behind, 

Bui stnyed with it in deep and rapturous content; 

Her ardor turned 

Henceforth within upon a secret goal. 

Spirit and beauty seemed to flow together, 

Each rapt in each 

Like a hushed lily in a hidden pool. 

Only at dances did the sprite peep out. 

Ardent and yet controlled, 

Alive to every turn and slope of the rhythm 

As if the music spread a path for her 

To what she truly sought. 



'Twas at a dance she found it — found the 
And no one had to question what she found : 
Her eyes, her very iinger-tips, proclaimed 
The marvel it was to be a part of her, 
A part of love. 

[24] 



Cross Patch 



The man — he had no medals and ribbons of triumph ; 

If she had fled on horse or even on foot 

He never could have caught her. 

It must have been his mind's humility 

That made her stay, 

So thoughtless of itself, so thoughtful of 

Forgotten wisdoms, old greatness, world riddles ;. 

A patient, slow, but never yielding search 

(Passionate too, with wings' flight of its own) 

For what — compared with other minds she knew — 

Might well have seemed the blessed western isles. 

They lived beyond the village on a hill 

Beneath a row of pines ; a house without pretense 

Yet fully conscious of uncommon worth — 

A house all books inside. 

Their only neighbor was a garrulous man, 
Who smoked a never finished pipe 
Upon a never finished woodpile 
Strategically placed beside the road 
So none could pass without his toll of gossip. 
He started it. 

One day, pointing his thumb across the pines, he said 
"There's something wrong up yonder ; 
Their honeymoon has set behind a storm. 
I heard 'em fight last night . . . 
Well, what'd he expect? They're all alike — women," 
Of course it got about, 

[25] 



POETRY: ,1 M« 



cl y. 



And while no one quite believed, 

Still, to make sure, some friendly women called. 

They said that he was studying, quite as usual. 

Not changed at all, just quiet and indrawn — 

The last man in the world to make a quarrel; 

And she, well, of course she wasn't so easy to read, 

Always strange and diSerent from a child; 

But even in her the sharpest eye saw nothing 

That seemed the loose end of the littlest quarrel. 

No couple could have acted more at ease; 

And anyhow, a woman like thai, they said, 

Would never have stayed so quiet in the pines 

With unhappiness, but tossed it from her broadcast 

Like brands from a bonfire. 

She said the house was damp — and that was all. 

At last even the old garrulous woodpile 

Knocked out the ashes of it from his pipe. 



But then, a few months later, a fri^tened servant girl 
Ran at early morning from the pines, 
Crying the Judge in town. 
She said her mistress suddenly, without cause, 
Standing by her in the kitchen, turned on her 
Blackly with words no decent girl deserved, 
Then struck her full in the face, spat on her, pulled her hair. 
She wanted compensation, the servant did. 
And a clean character before the world, 
Ves, and punishment for the beast who hurt her — 

126] 



like 3 Tidal wave, 
like weed and wreckage, 
ithing wrong at the pines 



night, 



» 
» 



That is. if the woman wasn't mad. 

Mati — oh ho! the shock of it 

Rolled seething over the pli 

And in the wake of the wa 

Many a hint and sense of si 

Sprawled tn the daylight. 

A stable boy remembered 

How not a week before she'd called for a horse, 

The spiritedest saddle they had, 

And when she brought him back 'twas I: 

The horse and woman both done up. 

Slashed, splashed and dripping; 

But all she said was, "Send the bill; 

The beast's no good — I'll never ride again," 

So this and other stories quite as strange 
Stretched ever>-body's nerves for the trial to come 
And made them furious when it didn't come — 
He settling with the girl outside of court. 
The judge's wife knew all there was to know: 
Not jealousy at all, just nerves — 
Every woman, you know, at certain times . . . 
Of course, agreed the village, so that's it? still 
(Not to be cheated outright), still, 
Even so, she'd best take care of that temper ; 
A husband's one thing, an unborn child's another — 
She'd always been a stormy, uncontrollable soul. 
Some blamed the husband he had never reined her in, 

(27 1 




POETRY: A Magatini of Versf 

Most pitied him a task impossible. 

All waited the event on tiptoe — 

It wasn't like other women, somehow, for her to have a child. 



The months passed, no child was bom. 
Then other women sneered openly: 
She wanted one and couldn't — served her right. 
This lapse from the common law of wives 
Was all the fissure the sea required 
To force the dike with. Linle by little then, 
The pressure of year on year. 
The pines and the two lives they hid 
Grew dubious, then disagreeable, then at last sinister. 
At this point the new generation took up 
Its inheritance, the habit of myth. 
And quite as a matter of course it found her hateful, 
Ugly, a symbol of sudden fear by darkened paths — 
Cross Patch ! 

And one by one the people who were young 
Beside her youth, moved off or died or changed, 
Forgetting her youth as ihey forgot their own ; 
Until if ever she herself 
Had felt a sudden ovenvhelming pang 
To stop some old acquaintance on the road 
And stammer out, "You know — don't you — the girl I was — 
I was not always tkh, was I?" she might have found 
A dozen at most to know the Sprite her youdi, 
But none to clear the overtangled path 

[28] 



Cross Patch 



That led from Sprite to Cross Patch ; not one, not one, 

But looking back would damn 

The very urge of joy in Sprite, and all its ardent spirit 

For having mothered Cross Patch ; not one, not one. 

To see the baffled womanhood she was, 

Orphan of hopes too bright, not mother of evil. 

And thus besieged on all sides by the present 

She fought against all sides, as if by fury 

To force one way to yield. 

For both it was a nightmare, not a life, and neither 
Could well have told how it had ever begun ; 
But once begun it seemed inevitable, 
A storm that settled darkly round their souk. 
Unwilled as winter. 

With moan of wind through sere and barren boughs 
And skies forever masked. 
The first blow of the quarrel had been hers, 
A blow unguessed by either, for she struck 
Like nature, not to hurt but to survive. 
But wrath accrued 

So soon thereafter that the blow seemed angry. 
And she struck out again with eyes and tongue 
Pursuing him, the angrier at his grief. 
Until in sheer defense he hit 
Not at herself, but at her blows, to ward them ; 
Keeping the while 
His thought above the dark upon a star or so 

[29] 



POETRY: J Mage 



of Ve 



Fixed in the past. But she defended her wrath 

As part of her dignity and right: they stormed 

\)^, up the hill and down, 

Increasing darkness to the end of h'fe. 

Of him friends said 

He seemed like a lonely sentinel 

Posted against the very edge of doom, 

Whom no watch came relieving. 

"She'll kill him yet. the fool!" the woodpile's verdict 

Before the pipe went out for the last time. 

Leaving the pines unneighbored. 



But he was wrong, the urn outlasted the flame. 
One night, hands at her throat, she came 
And knelt before him, timidly reaching out 
And trying to speak, to sf>eak — struggling as if words 
Were something still to learn. 
At last speech broke from her, so agonized 
He hardly knew if it were supreme wrath or supreme s 

plication; 
"1 OK did not love me . . ." 
And as he bent to her he felt 
Her girlhood cry, a murdered thing returned. 
He hoped that it was wrath, as easier to endure. 
Feeling it burn from mind to heart, from heart to soul. 
Gathering more awe, more terror, at each advance. 
Like a priest with sacrifice it passed 
The colonnades of his thought, entering without pause 
[30] 



CrmsPmtck 



An imkiiafini altar of hs bdog 

Brnind a cnrtain never moved before 

'Tes ^id mmi hve ai^ . . . ** 

Bodi gazed apoa the sacrifice held up 

As thougli it were the hkeding heart of dieir ovni lives 

SomdhoiF no lot^er their own. 

And then the priest returned, slowly, pace by pace. 
Out of the hudi of feeling into the hu^ of thought. 
It was the priest and not himself, the man believed. 
Who like an echo, not less agonized. 
Whispered across the waste of many lives. 
Whispering 'T^o . . . " 

Whose heart, the man's or woman's, lowest stooped 
To raise the other prostrate heart aloft 
With supplication and consolement, urging it 
To live— oA, livef — djring itself the while, 
God knew before the beginning of the world. 
We only know that stooping so, dust turned to dust. 
All hearts meet at last. 

Horace Holley 




[31] 



POETRY: A Masatin, 0/ Vtrit 
EDITORIAL COMMENT 

/ 



SHAKESPEARE 



i 




I HAT manner of man was this who peopled a 
provincial stage, made music of a barbarous 
tongue, played a few parts, dreamed many 
dreams, set up an estate in his native village, 
and died in his prime three hundred years ago 
What manner of man was it whose name, dur- 
ing these three centuries, has been rung on all the bells of 
fame, whose people arc the friends of all the world, whose 
thinking washes under all our cargoes, and whose rhythms 
are the waves on which our visions ride? Everywhere he 
is present — we cannot escape him; he passes current like the 
coin of the realm. He is part of our language, of the phras- 
ing and movement and beat of it; and when we are silent 
the very winds and stars march to his music. What manner 
of man was this who has become so much more important to 
the world than he ever was to himself ? 

Of course there is only one word that a man can write with 
whatever expenditure of int — the word myself. Shakes- 
peare has been called impersonal, but he could no more 
escape this word than the clamorous egotist who shouts 
"I! I! I!" on every page. If he hides behind his characters, 
he is nevertheless there, and the search for his evasive pcr- 
sonalii\' is the central and secret fascination of his work. 
Some writers are easy to find in the books they leave iis, and 

132] 





I 

I 



Shakespeare 

when found they may be no great matter; others reveal 
themselves only to their friends, and reward them with 
special intimacy ; others pause for a beautiful gesture, a 
§milc, almost a touch, and arc off again, always alluring ajid 
eluding. But this poet, who, giving himself away in thirty- 
seven plays and an hundred and fifty-four sonnets, was yet 
the most reserved of men, this poet is the most magnetic 
of all. The things we discover of him — that sympathy and 
insight, that humor and shrewdness, that love of all life 
and passion for all beauty, that poignant tenderness at the 
edge of a grave, that strange worldlincss and baffling in- 
diSerence to his art — these are but the beginning of his self. 
His secret is always deeper within, further beyond. The 
more we get—those of us who get beneath the surface'at all 
— the more awaits us. 

Because this poet does not wear his heart on his sleeve 
or explain himself to the passer-by, and because a certain type 
of mind delights in puzzles and cryptograms and facile inter- 
pretations, we have had a thousand misreadinp of his char- 
acter; and even huge and elaborate Baconian theories to rob 
us of our Shakespeare, and substitute for that large figure 
something small and definite and precise. The "myriad- 
minded," we are told, must have been a soldier to reveal 
war, a lawyer to understand law, a courtier to present princes, 
uid of late Mr. Frank Harris has soberly asserted that he 
must have been a madman to compass the madness of Lear. 
What arc these foolish commentators doing but exposing 
their own folly? The colossus stands there unshaken, smil- 




POETRY: J M«ga 



in, ./ C.r 
nite, with thai s 



M 

; look of pity 



ing his enigmatic solemn 
and tenderness in his eyes. 

It takes a poet to interpret a poet. Holbein might have 
painted Shakespeare if he had lived long enough, or Diirer 
might have made a copperplate of him as mysterious as the 
Melancolia. But no meaner imagination can quite com- 
pass that soul adrift between hell and heaven, devoured by 
earthly desires and divine despairs, writing immortal plays 
as a kind of lucrative by-play, a sop and solace to his tyr- 
annous imagination, which clamored for freedom in worlds 
greater than his own. Now and then, during these three 
centuries, someone has cast a flash-light on this figure, but 
no one has yet revealed all the pride and power of it, all the 
sorrow and weakness. Even Mr, Edwin Arlington Rob- 
inson, in his illuminating monologue, Ben Jonson Entertains 
a Man from Stratford, though he gets nearer to the heart of 
his subject than any of the thousand- an d-one critics and 
panegyrists before him — even he does not strip that spirit 
bare. 

Shakespeare himself makes confession, of course, in the 
sonnets, besides his less deliberate confession in the plays. 
The sonnets present his supreme experiences — exquisite emo- 
tion, love exalting or degrading, conviction of sin, conviction 
of fame, the sense of unendurable beauty, the magnanimity 
of unalterable love, the blight of decay and death, the glory 
of spiritual life. And through the poem runs the theme 
of Hamlet — that sense of inadequacy for life which must 
haunt the artist, the man of thought and imagination : self- 

[34] 



Skakeipeare 

toitufc over doing always the wrong thing while seeing the 
right, self-disgust that his lady's other lovers can outplay 
him, that any fool can seize the moment for action better 
than he. 

Perhaps nowhere else, in English personal poetry, does 
one feel so sure of the poet's absolute uncompromising sin- 
cerity. In Shakespeare's sonnets a wide range of human ex- 
perience is transmuted into the subtlest music ever wrough' 
out of English words ; and so, for one who knows and loves 
them, they reach the heart of any mood, like a dear friend's 
voice. Seek them as a relief from petty cares and they 
soothe like running waters; go to them in grief and they 
are elegies, in joy and they chime like bells, in triumph and 
they sing paeans. Remorse, despair, pity, love, worship — ■ 
the most diverse emotions — all find their answer here. It is 
as though the poem had been sung for the special mood 
we bring to it, so intimately, so healingly, does it touch each 
wound and fill the chambers of the soul with beauty. 

The wjnnets record a period of passionate experience in a 
life whose serenity is elsewhere its strongest note. They are 
the forty days of struggle in the wilderness, and they bring, 
not bitterness or violence, but surer vision and deeper sym- 
pathy. They lead from the comedies to the tragedies, from 
Muck Ada About Nolhinff to Macbeth and King Lear. 

It is my feeling that from the time of the sonnets to his 
death — about fifteen years — the poet steeled himself against 
devastating emotional excitement and took refuge in his 
imagination. One thing seemed about as important as an- 

135] 



POETRY: J Masaz 



,1 V, 



■ 



Other in the actual world ; he felt something of (hat illumined 
apathy which Browning ascribes to the resurrected Lazarus, 
The people around him became pan of the dream, gaining 
color and significance but losing substantiality. Gradually 
his serenity regained its poise: wc have the proof of this in 
Tht Temptst, and we should have had more in thai un- 
written greatest play of all had he lived to grow old in 
Stratford. 

One of Shakespeare's love lyrics — perhaps the most magi- 
cal — has long seemed to me expressive of a larger meaning. 
Let us listen lo its haunting music : 

Take — oh, cake ihoic lipi away 
Thai so swccrly were forsworn; 

And thoie eyes, the break of d»y — 
Lights that do mislead the morn; 

But my kisse* bring again, 
" ing again— 



t of I 






aled ij 



Sealed i. 

I do not know what lady first heard that madrigal. To 
inspire it was worth a life of care, and we may well hope 
that this high service to the world may have shortened the 
purgatorial pains she had to suffer for her perfidy. But 
perhaps we should think of her as a symbol of something less 
tangible, a symbol of life itself. Surely it was thus that 
Shakespeare knew and loved his world. Tantalizing mistress, 
what vow could bind her to his soul forever? Elusive and un- 
conquerable, her trustful eyes could turn from him, her smile 
could pass to another before it had time to fade, her oaths 
were broken even in the uttering. Royal and bountiful she is, 

[36J 



^^^^^wau 



Shakespeare 



dutiful and strong ; bui un remembering and insecure. For a 
her treasures crown him and all her raptures fall about 
his soul. But even in the mument of ecstasy he knows the 
vanti}- of their sensuous joys. Then above all he feels the infi- 
nite summons. The world and its accepted values fade off into 
rtuthingness, time loses its brief space in the eternal years, 
knowledge is drawn up like a curtain before the unfath- 
omable mystery, and all our human pride becomes the 
shadow of a dream. Before that inescapable vision that 
are life and song and fame ? Bubbles to be blown for a toy, 
to rise and gleam and vanish and be thought of no more. 
And so, deeper than his love of life was his indifference to it, 
wider than his knowledge of the world was his recklessness 
oi its applau-iie. Flowers or ashes — he cared not; kisses or 
broken vows — he could live and love for cither. Thus in 
his personality there is something selfless and inscrutable 
which from age to age has fascinated the world. We feel 
him vast, impartial, beneficent, like light and air. We return 
to the old simile and liken him to the ocean for universality 
and strength and poise. And we feel in his presence, as 
before these natural forces, that he tells not all. he gives not 
ill. We take from him Hamlri. Lear. The Tempeil un- 
Katisfied, wondering what he could have done if he had ever 
put forth his utmost power. We diagram his greatness, we 
explain it in terms of earth and in terms of heaven. We 
thiTDrizc atid define and dream, but the heart of his mystery 
tfill eludes u». We are baffled by his impenetrability, and 
we cast him from our hearts into the outer darkness of in- 

137 1 



POETRY: ,1 M a 



./ y. 



I 



icllectual admiration, and clasp once more the familiar idols 
— those lesser heroes whose limitations make them kin to 
us. And he knows that we are faithless, that we take 
him for what he is not, that our hearts are cold to him. He 
had foreseen it all — that fame is but a breath, that immor- 
tality is but light across a grave. He was not deceived, and 
his love can never change with the altering of ours. For 
the centre of his soul, as of all great souls, is love. Still out 
of the deeps of time his voice seems calling to the approaching 
years: 

Take — oh, take ihost lipi twsy 



That so iweelly were forsworn; 
And those eyei, the break of day — 
Lights that do mislead the morn 
But my kisses bring again, 

Bring again— 

Seals of love, but sealed in vain, 

Sealed in vaint 



STATUS RERUM — ^THH SECOND 



^ 



H.Mty^^\^ 



It is over three years since I set out to write Statut Rerum 
(number one), as a brief summary of the state of affairs in 
contemporarj' poetry. It appeared in Poetry as a summary 
of affairs in England, for my remarks about American verse 
were at that tjme deemed by our editor cither impolite or 
imprudent. My opinion of the work of nearly all the older 
living American poets, save Bliss Carman, has no whit 
changed; to thera and to their generation of editors we owe 
nothing which would look polite in print. Perhaps I may 
[38] 



Status Rerum — The Secontl 



now be pennittcd to say this, beotuse it may be a sort of surety 
for my candor, seeing that 1 am about to present a moiv 
pleasing schedule. 

During three years of varying irritation and consolation 
I have seen Poetry print a certain amount of rubbish and 
a very considerable amount of the best work now done in 
English. I do not think that our editors have missed much 
that was really worth printing. I dare say there is not 
enough really good poetry actually written per month to 
fill completely all the space in this magazine. 

It has published the best current work of Mrl Y'eats and 
of Ford Madox Hueffer, the only two older poets whose 
writing has any lively significance. It has published Padraic 
Colum, Allen Upward, "H. D.." T. S. Eliot, Aldington 
at his best, Orrick Johns, Frost, Carlos Williams, Bodenheim, 
Sundburg, myself, Rodker, etc. 

The St. Louis Mirror scored in getting the Spoon River 
Anthology — that is the one big hole in our record, and 
Poetry was not slow to recognize the merit of that work. 
The best English work that we have missed has been a few 
short poems by Harold Monro and a few by Mrs. Anna 
Wickham. 

Imagism, before it went off into froth, and before stray 
editors used to write to me to complain that their mail was 
full of imitations of "imagism, vorticism, vers libre, etc, 
with no body to it" — the early imagism — had its first breath 
of air in these pages. At present its chief defects are sloppi- 
, lack of cohesion, lack of organic centre in individual 

(Ml 



POETRY: .1 Magazi 



of Ve 



poems, rhetoric, a conventional form of language to be 
found also in classical text-books, and in some cases a ten- 
dency more than slight towards the futurist's cinematographic 
fluidity. 

However, coming at the noble art from the angle of 
nationalism or chauvinism, dividing the produce geographi- 
cally, one finds some ground, or at least some excuse, for 
congratulating ourselves or our country. 

Looking at the names of English writers in my first Status 
Rerum, 1 find that not one of them has bettered his position 
one iota. Only Mr. Yeats and Mr, Hueffer have done work 
worthy of notice. The rest have either stagnated or relapsed 
completely into silence. 

As for the younger generation, in 1912 America had very 
little wherewith to challenge comparison with England or 
France, At the present writing one can select an all-America 
team of let jeanes to compete with /« jeuitft of either France 
or England or any other nation, 

I am not "buttering" anyone. One usually refrains from 
complimenting young poets, for it may be thought that com- 
pliments tend to make them sit down and contemplate their 



4 



I beauties, which is not i 
cataloguing cold facts. 1 do not kno 
but his work is of our decade : its relal 
ade and not with the decade preceding, 
the output of the last three years we i 
With regard to the best work doni 



Mr. 



I am simply 
Masters' age, 
with our dec- 
ve are judging 



I these three years 



c may as well recognize that a 



:ain part of it is American. 



[401 




Status Rer 



—The Second 



Eliot, Frost and "H. D." arc Americans; so also are Wil- 
liams, Sandburg, Bodcnhetm, Orrick Johns, John Gould 
Fletcher, etc. 

Against a team made up of these writers you can place in 
England: Aldington. Monro. Rodker. Flint, Lawrence, 
Mrs. VVickham, Douglas Golddng; and we stifTer in no 
degree by the comparison. If Fletcher occasionally goes off in 
rhetorical bombast, it is at least better than Mr. Aber- 
crombie's bombast. And Lindsay is more alive than his 
numerous English confreres. As for the sickly multitude 
pouring out mediocre and sub-mediocre work in both coun- 
tries — in the first place they don't count, and, in the second 
place, if any among them do turn out a good scrap of work 
these scraps neutralize. 

Even France — and France has not been at war all three 
years — even France will not leave us hopelessly in the rear. 
We may estimate the weight of her younger generation at 
more or less that of Jules Romains. Charles Vildrac, M. 
Jouve and MM. Klingsor, Jacob, Appollonaire, etc. (Recog- 
nizing most emphatically that America of the former gener- 
ation can in no way compete with the mass of De Regnier, 
Dc Gourmont, Francis Jammes, Tailhade. et lean amis.) 

The rest of the current French work is full of loose 
Hugoesque rhetoric, sociology, mucked mysticism for the 
multitude, aqueous bombast, and all the fluid and ubiquitous 
diseases. 1 don't mean to say there is none good, but one's 
impression of fifty-odd books of their verse is that they need 
a deal of sorting, a deal of excerpting and compression. 

[41] 




POETRY: A Ma 



0/ y. 



I don't know whether one is to lump the Irish poets into 
an all-empire team, or to judge thcra by themselves. James 
Joyce, by far the most significant writer of our decade, is 
confining himself to prose; or, to be meticulously exact, he 
has written a few brief poems, which Poetry will soon pub- 
lish. I do not know that one can say anything of cither 
Colum or Campbell that one would not have said three 
years ago. 

I shall not indulge in hopes or prophesyings. Certain 
young American writers have appeared; I can hardly be 
accused of undue prejudice in favor of my native country 
in stating the fact of their appearance. But I do not wish 
to focus attention on what has been done; it is better to 
keep an eye on what still awaits doing. 

Others, with its pages open to any hair-breadth experi- 
ment, is deserving of welcome. We can scarcely be too 
ready to inspect new ventures, and it is a pleasing contrast 
to the stuffiness of some of our ancestral publication:, which 
still reek of eighrccn-fifty. Mr. Kreymborg, its editor, has 
published EUot, Canncll, Williams, himself, Carlton Brown, 
etc. Moreover, certain purely commercial and popular maga- 
zines have lifted an eyelid: H. L. Mencken has more or 
less discovered John McClurc, Wattles, and "John Sanborn." 

Orrick Johns writes me most vigorously of the genius 
of a dramatist, Sadakiehl Hartman. "But print? — put 
Rabelais through a bath of perfume, and serve in cigarette 
holders at a boudoir spree!" 



[42] 



Status Rerum — The Second 

1 have not Kccn enough of the work of most of these 
writers to form any sort of judgment, but it seems to me 
that they have among them a sense of activity which was 
lacking in New York when I passed that way five years ago. 
At any rate the country looks less like a blasted wilderness 
than it did a few years since, and for that let us be duly 
thankful — and let us hope it is not a straw blaze. I 

Ezra Pound / 



REVIEWS 



MK, MASEFIELDS NEV, BOOK 

Good Friday and Other Poems, by John Mascfield. Mac- 
mi Uan. 

The title poem of this volume, a drama of the CruciJixion, 
is less interesting than the sonnets which follow it. Here 
the poet, like many a sonneteer before him, presents his 
philowphy of life, describes his despairing pursuit of Beauty, 
who is "within all Nature, everywhere," and who yet eludes 
capture, and gives her votary only 

Ont hour, or iwo, or ihree in long years scitlercd. 
No summer butterfly is this brooding spirit of Beauty, but 
the secret music at the heart of creation, the sublime har- 
mony which the poet overhears in those few divine moments, 
wd to which, forever after, he would tune his life and his 

I>TC. 

For (hne. so many >etr« of u«clcs!i toil, 
Detpair, endeavor, and again despair, 
I 43] 



J 



I - 



POETRY: A Afn 



Sweat, that (he base r 
Tdit detighl to tempt i 
A life upon the cross. 



To n 



9 that ihf d«aih-bed ends. 
The undertone of these sonnets is profound sadness. Hav- 
ing lost the God whom he "was taught in youth," the poet 
faces almost with agony the perishing loveliness of the flesh, 
the earth, the sidereal universe — of all things vbible or 
imagined, and lives on under sword-Iikc flashes of a light too 
glorious and terrible to be endured. 

What am I, LifeP A thing of water}- m[i 

Held in cohesion by unreiliDg cclli, 

Which work they know not why, which never halt. 

Myself unwitting where their Mailer dwelli. 

I do not bid them, yel they toil, they ipin 

A world which tisea me ai I use them; 

Nor do I know which end or which begin 

Nor which to praiie, which pamper, which condemn. 

I answer lo the vast, as wave by wave 

The sea of air goei over, dry or wet. 

Or the full moon comes swimming from her care, 

Or the great sun comes forth: this myriad I 

Tingles, not knowing how, yet wondering why. 

Beside the passionate self- revelation of these sonnets, much 
of this poet's earlier work becomes stage drapery or melo- 
drama. For Mr. Mascfield, as we have said before, is 
stronger as a reflective and descriptive poet than as a play- 
wright or a novelist in verse. In such sonnets as Thrif 
myriad days. There on the darkened deathbed. So in the 
empty tky. It may be to with us. There !i no God, The little 
robin, iVhen all these million cells — in these and others we 
find a poignant sincerity and simplicity in the expression of 

|44] 




Mr. Masefirld's Neu- Book 

, modem altitude toward life, of a feeling enforced by 
modem science in millions ot hearts. 

The shori one-act play Good Friday is comparatively arti- 
ficial. The poet presents the drama of the Crucifixion from 
afar off, through its reaction upon Pilate, his wife Procula, 
the centurion Longinus, Herod, the Jewish crowd, and a 
madman who, like most stage lunatics, is saner than the 
worldly wise. We watch the approach and consummation 
of the sublime event as through a veil darkly, noting only a 
kind of dim processional. The play has movement, and a 
certain decorative quality; but. as in a procession, the people 
arc conventional characters rather than individuals. 

Tlierc is a dangerous allure in this subject, but the poet 
who touches it faces a formidable rival. The intense vitality 
of the gospels, which has survived nearly two millennia, makes 
any modem assault seem weak. In the bible story, each 
personage of the great drama stands out as a living passionate 
human being. In Mr, Masefield's version they all seem to 
mouth their speeches and gesticulate like stage figures. Pilate 
suffers the most, for he loses his time-honored taciturnity 
and becomes a man of words. And the Madman is as con- 
ventional as the others, saying only the expected thing. The 
play has a certain dignity, and at times beauty, both reaching 
X dimax in the centurion's description of the Crucifixion. 

But the sonnets arc the thing. //. M. 



[45] 



i 



POETRY; J Ma, a 



4 



The Man against the Sky, by Edwin Arlington Robinson. 

Maonlllan. 

Certain zealous admirers of Mr. Robinson insist that he 
was the beginning of the "new movement." In the stern 
stript austerities of Captain Craig (published in 1902) they 
find the heredity of Robert Frost, Edgar Lee Masters, and 
other poets of modern life. In a certain sense this may be 
true, even though Mr, Masters, at least, never read a 
line of Robinson until a year after Spoon River was written. 
Before the heavily scented 'nineties were over, Mr. Robinson 
was writing, in a grave bare style, simple and direct poems 
about his neighbors, and since then, in Thr Children nf the 
Night and The Town Doun the River, he has gone his 
own waj' among them with complete Independence, If he 
does not move us so deeply as the other two poets, if his work 
Is less rich, his revelation of life less complete, this may be 
because of a slower, colder temperament. We do not feel 
him so much in the midst of things. He seems to stand 
aloof, like a scientist, analyzing each human being curiously, 
as a specimen. Perhaps, as Anders Zom once said of a 
certain painter, "He docs not love enough." 

But in my opinion Mr, Robinson has never done better 
work than in this lastest volume. Flammonde is a portrait as 
deftly drawn as AUnever Chftvy, and more subtle in its t>pe, 
that of a whimMcally blighted nobility. Thr Gift of God 
presents the almost grotesque exaltation of motherhood, John 

[46] 



A Pioneer 

Gorkam is a complete little tragedy of disillusionment, and 

in such poems as Old Trails and Llewellyn and the Tree 

' ' we observe certain odd and unexpected tricks by which fate 

keeps a relentless control over human lives. Only in the 
final and titular poem does the poet seem to reflect about life 
in his own person, putting a bitter question to his soul in 
such lines as these: 

If, after all that we have lived and thought, 

All comes to Naught — 

If there be nothing after Now, 

And we be nothing anyhow. 

And we know that — ^why live? — 

And he finds no more quieting answer to the question than 
a dim perception of something "too permanent for dreams." 

But this we know, if we know anything: 
4^ LL ..' That we may laugh and fight and sing 

" ^ ^^'' And of our transience here make offering 

To an orient Word that will not be erased. 
Or, save in inconununicable gleams 
Too permanent for dreams. 
Be found or known. 

The portrait of Shakespeare is a masterpiece. Everyone 
has written about Shakespeare, but no one, so far as I can 
remember, has got beneath his skin with such devilish inge- 
nuity and angelic divination as Mr. Robinson when, as h< 
puts it in the title, Ben Jonson Entertains a Man from 
Stratford. The poet cleverly shifts all responsibility bj 
making Rare Ben do the talking, and Ben, with a neighbor's 
frankness, a friend's humorous affection, and a fellow-poet*! 
admiration, telb what seems the truth about that enigmatic 
figure as no one has ever told it before. I cannot quote from 

[47] 



.11 



POETRY: A Mai:, 



0/ y. 



the poem — it is too compact. Go read it — in this 
nary month. 

Perhaps we may more fitly quote from Cassandra, in which 
the poet turns his flash-light upon a whole nation, and 
sketches the American visage in sharp and stinging lines: 



i] of your pride, 



"Becauie a itvt complac 

Have made your pe " 
Think you that you ; 

Forever pampered and untried? 

"What lost eclipse of hislory, 

What bivouac of the marching star 

Have given ihe sign for you to tee 
Millenniums and last great nan? 



"Your poliar, Dove and Eagle make 

A Trinity that evep you 
Rate higher than you rale yourselves; 

It pays, it Batters, and it's new. 

"The power is yours, bin not (he sight; 

You see not upon what you tread; 
You have the ages for your guide. 

But not the wisdom to be Ted. 

"Think you to tread forever down 

The merciUit old verities? 
And arc you never to have eyes 

To see the world for what it is? 

"Are you to pay for what you have 
With all you arc?"— No other word 

We caught, but with a laughing crowd 
Moved on. None heeded, and few heard. 



[48] 



y 



. Jldington's Imagei 



MR. ALDINGTON S IMAGES 



in. R)ur 



Images Old and New, by Richard Aldington, ^ur Seas Co., 

Boston. 

One of the highest pleasures that the intelligent and dis- 
criininating reader of poetry can have, is lo discover some poet 
who cmploy-s tlitoiighout his work a clean and sure technique. 
TTjerc have been few such poets in English, but in France, 
Italy, and wherever the classic spirit has shown itself strongly, 
wc can discover many examples to prove the crudity of our 
usual slap-dash Anglo-Sa.von methods. Recently there have 
been in England signs of a return to that simplicity and 
restraint which are the qualities of highest art, and it is to be 
hoped that the war will have the effect of still further clari- 
fying the English spirit, over-muddied with floods of Vic- 
torian sentiment and rhetoric. Of this admirable tendency 
Mr. Aldington is the precursor and the most shining example. 

The impression one gains from the reading of the thirty- 
fivc pieces which he has now gathered [ogecher and given to 
the public, is one of uniform technical excellence. Here is a 
Style like a sword-blade, bright, keen, nervous, and never 
exuberant. Nowhere docs the poet say too much, nowhere 
does he permit his image to become clouded with long accu- 
tnuUtions of detail, vague sentiments or indefinite moral- 
izings. In fact, it may be that he sometimes says too little 
for those who seek to read as they run, or for those who arc 
too readily inclined to look for that heroic strumming and 
smashing whicJi is vulgarly considered to be the chief char- 

[49] 



POETRY: A Magazine of Verse 

acteristic of "major" poetry. But it is necessar>' to point 
out that this common view of poetry is not that of the 
great artists, whether they be Greets, Chinese, Japanese, or 
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. "In restraint the master 
first displays himself." ^y such standards Mr. Aldington 
must be judged, and he Is neither "major" nor "minor," 
but simply a poet. 

These Images Old and Neiu as he calls them, divide them- 
selves roughly into two classes, the first dealing with Greek 
antiquit}-, the second with modern life. In cither case, what- 
ever be the subject, the unity is preserved, and it is a unity 
of style, of attitude. Mr. Aldington is a poet who speaks 
the truth. He is never vaguely romantic, or sentimental, or 
writing to satisfy anything but his own artistic conscience. 
There is scarcely a page in this small volume in which we 
cannot find something that will satisfy us at the first reading, 
and yet more fully «rith successive readings; but there are 
some pages which will begin by shocking us and end by con- 
vincing us. Here is a force which attracts us the more 
completely for its apparent simplicity: and it is the force not 
of realism but of reality. 

It is very difficult among so much that is good to select 
for quotation a single poem and to set it apart from the 
indissoluble unity of the book that contains it. Here, how- 
ever, is a brief example which I pick because it is among the 
less frequently quoted poems: 

The cripples are going (o churcli. 

Their crutches bcai upon ihc 

And ihey have clumsy i 




Mr. Aldingtons Images 

Their clothes are black, their faces peaked and mean; 

Their legs are withered 

Like dried bean pods. 

Their eyes are stupid as frogs\ 

And the god, September, 
Has paused for a moment here 
Garlanded with crimson leaves. 
He held a branch of pointed oak. 
He smiled like Hermes the beautiful 

Cut in marble. 

There we have it all: a sense of th^ sordidness of exist- 
ence, of the wayward and casual beauty with which nature 
decks that sordidness ; irony and pity, concealed yet poignant; 
and I know not what feeling of nostalgia and transience 
that arises somehow from all these. Mr. Aldington is a 
poet, as Simonides and Turgenev were poets. 

We in America, at least, have much to learn from him. 
The inchoate vastness of our material and of its intertangled 
racial currents, the haphazardness of our methods and insti- 
tutions, all tend to drive us towards a poetry which is 
ephemeral in that it is hectic, disorganized, lacking in re- 
flective judgment. Europe has already taught us to distin- 
guish the vital elements in the work of such men as Whitman 
and Poe from the unvital: Europe can teach us more. 
There are at least a dozen poets in this country who could 
not do better than to keep a copy of Images Old and New 
on their shelves, for constant reference and comparison. ^ 

John Gould Fletcher j 



[51] 



POETRY: .< M«go 



OUR CONTEMPORARIES 
I 



i 



Poetry is not only an art — it is becoming almost an 
activity. 

The Drama League of America has prepared for distribu- 
tion a long list of "Available Material for Shakespeare Ter- 
centennial Programs," for the use of schools, clubs, etc., 
through this spring and summer of the anniversary year. 
These programs consist of folt dances, music, and a variety 
of masques and pageants. Among these latter are fairy 
masques for children, elaborated from scenes in the plays; 
and the most important program is Mr. Percy Mackayc's 
Caliban, which is to be acted through the season by a tour- 
ing company. 

II 

The city of Newark, New Jersey, has ofFered thirteen 
prizes, beginning with a first prize of $250, and amounting 
to $1,000 in all, for poems celebrating the city and its his- 
tory, in honor of its two-hundrcd-and-fifticth anniversarj'. 
The poems must not be over one thousand words long, and 
they must be submitted anonymously before April tenth, to 
a committee consisting of Prof. John C. Van Dyke, Mr. 
Thomas L. Masson, Miss Theodosia Garrison, and certain 
officials and teachers of Newark. 

We would humbly suggest that the committee should be 
composed entirely of poets, following the example of sucli 
contests in painting, sculpture and architecture. 
152) 



Our ConletnporarifS 



III 



^^M Under the inspiration of lectures by Miss Katharine How- 
^^V ard, author of Eve and other books of verse, the Poetry 
^^^ Society of Utah has been established in Salt Lake City, 
under the presidency of Miss Myra Sawder, Similar socie- 
ties should be founded in many cities. In every such group 
would probably be found at least one member with a musical 
voice and a feeling for rhythm, who could read aloud the 
best modern poetry without turning it into broken prose. 
Extreme simplicity should be the aim of such a reader — no 
"elocutionar)*" effects. The production of verse among the 
members, and ruthless criticism of it, might well be encour- 



aged also. ; 
talent. 



1 aid to appreciation or a stimulus to possible 



NOTES 

Of ihe two Engliih poets reprncntcd this monih, one, Mr- 
Ernest Rhya, h>8 appeared before in the magazine. Long a 
prominent member of Welsh and Celtic societies, and editor of 
Everyman's Library, he published, in 1894, A Loitdon Roit, and 
■linct ibcn Gv^enevtre, a Lyric Play, and The Masquf of the 
Grail. 

Mr. Arthur V. Kent, of London, was born in 1S92, and has ap- 
peared thus far only in two or three English papers. 

Of the American poets: 

Agnes Lee (Mrs. Otio Freer), of Chicago, author of Tht 
Sharing and other books of verse {Sherman, French He Co.), has 
been a frequent contributor to Poetnt; also Mr. William Ro«e 
Ben6l, of New York, one of the editors of The Crntury, whose 
lawsi book is Tht Falconer of God and Other Poems ( Yale L'ni- 
yersily Press). 

Mr. Horace Hotley, a young New Yorker who h» appeared 
e before, is the author of The Inner Garden (Sher 



& Co.) and The Slricten King (Shakt 
[53] 



t Head Pr»s 



POETRY: .4 Mas„z 



0/ f. 



Mr. Clement Wood, a native of Alabama, and now > New 
York joumalist, has contribuied vtm to The Masitt and other 
papers. 

Mr. Honaid Mumford Joues, now a graduate itudcot of the 
Univeraity of Chicago, is the author of a tiny pamphlet, privatelr 
printed in Wiiconsla and recently reviewed in Poetry, A Litllf 
Book of Local Ftrie. 

BOOKS RECEIVED 

OKiGiNAi. veiub: 
The Lisfenert, by Waller De La Mare. Henry Holt k Co. 
Songi of Ihe Fieldt, by Francis Ledtvidgc, with Introduction by 

Lord Dunsany. Duftield k Co. 
Ffrmuli, by Malcolm Clayton Burke. Privately primed. 
IFandmng fires, by Felham Webb. Privately printed, London. 
Goad Friday and Other Poems, by John Miselield. Micmillan. 
The Man AgaiasI the Sky, by Edwin Arlington Robinson. Mac- 
mil Ian. 

" and Other Poets", by Louis Uniermeyer. Henry Hoii i Co, 

Songs of the Soil, by Penton Johnson. Privately printed, New York. 
Today and Tomorrotu, by Charles Hanson Towne. Geo. H. 

Doran Co. 
The English Tongue and Other Poems, by Lewis Worthington 

Smith. Four Seas Co., Boston. 
Five Men and Pompey, a Series of Dramalie Portraits, by Stephen 

Vincent Ben^. Four Seas Co. 
The Tragidy, a Fantasy in Ferte, by Gitberi Moycr. Four Scaa Co. 

Pt.Avs: 
The Nameless One: A Play, by Anne Cleveland Cheney. 

Stokes Co. 
Mailer Will of Slralfard, by Louise Ayret Garnelt. Mai 

ANTIIOI.OGtES: 

The Home Book of Ferse for Young Folki. edited by Burl 
Stevenson. 

The Epic Songs of Russia, by Isabel Florence Hapgood. With 
Introduction by J. W. Mackail, M.A., LL.D. Scribner. 

Letters front America, by Rupert Bro<Ae. With Introduction by 
Henry James. Scribner. 

John Bannister Tabb, by M. S. Pine. Privately printed, Wasbin 
ton, D. C. 

[54] 



Fred. A. 



NO. 



•oetry 

•A Magazine of Vers- 

Edited by Harriet Monroe 



MAY 1916 

iBaldur— Holidiys — Finis AUen Upward S 

I May in the City . Max MicheUon fi 

ThR MewEOCDin — Lovs-Lyric — Midnight — The \VUlow 
Ttec— Stoni>— The Red Light— In the Park — A Hymn to 
Nlfiht. 

I To s Goldrn-Cruwned Thrusb Richard Hunt 

\ Sheila Eileen — Carnage ...... 

Antoinette OcCourRey Patterion 
I Xtid)ana~~An Old Song Daphne Kicf!er Thompson 7 

I ForgivcncBs .... Charles L. O'Donncll 7 

I Sketches in Color Maxwell Bodenhdra 7 



Dead Woman— TIi- w.n.i'.-.W.r 

Stort 
I Pyrotechnics I-III 
I To a Flower 
I A Little Girl l-XIII 
I Bdilorial Comment . 

Dnwu Ea«t 
I Reviews 

Ch]c«co Qnnite— Thi 
I Our Contemporariee 

A New School of Poetry— -lite Critic's Senie ol Humai 
I Notes . . 



lie Department 

Amy Lowell 7 

Siixciie Herter 7 

Mary Aldis 7 



i»— iwrj iidgiBB Poeta 



11.50 P£R YEAR 



SINGLE NUMB^TftS. V. CfW" 



poetry 

A {D^easnc of Vcrcc 



Vol. VI II 
No. II 



MAY, 1916 




BALDUR 

LD loves, old griefs, the burthen of old songs 
That Time, who changes all things, cannot 

change : 
Eternal themes! Ah, who shall dare to join 
The sad procession of the kings of song — 
Irrevocable names, that sucked the dregs 
Of sorrow from the broken honeycomb 
Of fellowship? — or brush the tears that hang 
Bright as ungathered dcwdrops on a briar? 
De^lh hallows all; but who will bear with me 
To breathe a more heartrending lamentation, 
To moum the memory of a love divided 
By life, not death, a friend not dead but changed? 

Not dead — but what is death? Because I hoard 
Iinmortal love, that withers not, but keeps 
Full virtue like some rare mcdtca 



[551 



POETRY: A Mats 



./ r. 



Hoarded for ages in a crystal jar 

By wonder- working gnomes; that only waits 

The sound of that lost voice, familiar still, 

Or sight of face or much of hand, to bring 

Life, like the dawn whose gentle theft unties 

The girdle of the petal-folded flowers, 

And ravishes their scent before they wake: 

My love is like a fountain frozen o'er, 

But no returning sun will ever break 

The seal of that forbidden spring; no foot 

Invade the weed-grown pathway; never kiss 

Wake the enchanted beauty of the wood, 

And bid the wheels of time revolve again. 

Though one should walk the ways of life, and we«r 

The sweet remembered name, yet he is not 

My playmate ; no, the boy whom I have loved 

Died long ago; the man is nothing but 

His aging sepulchre. 



And I. even I, 
Know in my deepest heart that I am not 
The boy who loved him ; and I vrould I were, 
With a most bitter longing which there are 
No creeds to comfort. Do wc madly feign 
The soul to be immortal? Fools! — it is not 
Even mortal, does not last the little space 
The body does, but alters visibly. 
And dies a million times 'twixt breath and breath. 

[561 



Forever and forever and forever 
Outgrown and left behind and cast away 
The joy that was the blossom of the soul. 
And hours that were the butterflies of time. 
What though ElysJan fields be white with light, 
Crowded with glorious forms, and freed from fear 
Or spoil or shock, how shall it profit me 
Aged with sad hours, to pass to them and meet 
Him as he is, removed and fallen and marred? 
Hath any God the power to give me back 
My bovhood : to undo this growth of years, 
In which I lose (he sense of what I was, 
And take a different nature? We. self-wrapped. 
Conjure with dreams of immortality, 
And wit not that the spirit is yet more frail 
Tlian that which holds it. Constant is it in nothing 
But change; the transmigration of the soul 
Goes on from hour to hour, it does not wait 
The dissolution of our frame, but is 
The law of life, fulfilled in everywise. 
And we who fear destruction perish ever. 

The soul — that vaulting speck, that busy flame. 
That climbing passion-flower, that god, that atom — 
It is the seeding-point of forces fed 
By earth and air and all we hear and see 
And handle. We take life and give it, but 
We may not keep it. Sooner might we hope 
To clutch the trickling moments in our palm, 
(57] 



POETRY: J Magazine of Verst 

Tate hold of the eternal pendulum, 
And bid the sun of our desire to stand. 

Who can take comfort to foresee himself 
On unknown stages playing other parts? 
It is but treading through a wider maze, 
A wearier cj'cle. Would the butterfly 
Feel lesser anguish, as it fell, to know 
Some egg in which it wrapped the spark of life 
Was ripening in the dark, some day to break 
Its natal bonds and walk the earth enrobed 
With green and golden fur? Or is it worth 
The caterpillar's knowing, as it shrinks 
Within the toffin it has built, and dies 
Between the straightening walls, that they shall crack 
In ruin days or weeks or ages hence, 
And issuing from the dust a thing of light — 
Not it — shall drink the morning air and wave 
Its crimson banners in the sun? 

AUfe 
Of endless deaths, an immortality 
Of partings, is it worth being gifted with? 
Such is the life of nations; they last on 
In plant-like continuity, while the men 
Who make them fall like leaves and are renewed. 
We call ourselves the English people now. 
But they who fought till sundown on that hill 
In Sussex all those hundred years ago, 
And died where they had fought, and never knew 
[58] 



The end of it, what had they happier been 
To hear of the great Charter, and the deeds 
Of that famed Parliament that drew the sword 
Meteor-like foith in shuddering Europe's gaze. 
And spilt the blood of kings? 

Let no man say 
Life may yteld other loves; because we loved 
At that age when to love is to be lost 
In them wc love, and not with narrow eyes 
To purse up faults and merits. In that age 
We loved although we knew not how to love, 
Before the buds of sense had learnt to give 
Their sweetness up in fiery-fatal blooms 
And fruit forbidden. Childhood treads the heights 
Whither nor friends nor loves of later days 
Can reach, when friends arc but acquaintances, 
And love's clear stream is muddied o'er with lust. 

Forever and forever and forever 
Gone are the days and nights of fairyland ; 
Days that were cups of summer, sacred nights 
Too sweet for slumber, houi^ like tears, on which 
The moonbeams peeped between the shuttered blinds 
Like children at a feast they cannot share. 
(O memories! Oh, to steal from paradise 
One more such moment, and then be no more I!) 
Those years and loves are gone, not to come back 
Till man can turn the wheels of life, and draw 
Creation in the thoroughfares of time. 
[59] 




POETRY: A Maffarint of Verse 
HOLIDAYS 

As the tree puts forth its flowers, 
Time at certain seasons dowers 

Men with moments so delicious 
They forget all former hours. 

Magic hints that wake the mind 
From the sleep that seals mankind — 

Raptures, tumults, yearnings, visions, 
Light that breaks upon the blind. 

Charmed in circles of the sea, 
Island of love's mystery, 

There are old, pathetic secrets 
Only known to you and mc. 

Children of the summertidc. 
Free from care and wrath and pride, 
We were happy while we wandered 
Up and down the long sea-side. 

Round the seagull's rocky home 
Azure waves through fretted foam 

Glanced and glowed like lancet windows. 
Sapphire in an ivory dome. 

Far afield a rain of light 

Washed the utmost sea-wave white; 

Heaved and rolled in blinding splendor. 
League on league of chrysolite. 
[60] 



Holidays 



Did we tread on beaten ground? 
Were the waves that rocked us round 

Lapping on some isle of wonder 
Dropped within the coral sound? 

Fainter than a cloud, the moon 
Floated up the sky too soon : 

Round us on the brooding valley 
Slept the summer afternoon. 

Every golden hour went by 
Like a bead of tracery 

Strung upon an Indian necklace 
To enchant a sultan's eye. 

How the stars, that hallowed night, 
Seemed to pulse with our delight, 
Notes of some mysterious music 
That we dared not read aright. 

Every star that downward fell 
Struck far off a mystic knell: 

Then the whole wide heaven about us 
Boomed to silence, like a bell. 

Something softer in the air 
Whispered to our hearts beware: 

It was an enchanted region, 
And we might not tarry there. 

[61] 



POETRY: A Magazine o/^ 

Long we sate and never spake, 
Lest the light illusion break. 

We had fallen asleep together, 
And we could not bear to wake. 

Never to that haunted shore 
Bid me bend my voyage more. 

Bitter thorns are left to harvest 
Where we gathered blooms before. 

FINIS 

Like a great sunset drawn beyond the sea, 
A visionary landscape framed in fire 
Of earthquake cities, toppling tower and spire 

Downward through rifts and gulfs of phantasy. 

So pass the memories of old love from me. 
Never to thrill again that inward lyre 
Aeolian, whose sad strains of sick desire 

These grosser measures breathe imperfectly, 

There is no love but first love; all beside 

Is passion's lightning or affection's moon. 
1 floated once on that triumphant tide. 

But stranded now among the wrecks and spars 

1 watch the night succeed the afternoon, 
And bide my sleep beneath the ancient stars. 

Jllen UpwarJ 
[62] 



MAY IN THE CITY 



THB NEWCOMERS 



Spring has come in the city; 
And the sun and the rain, 

And a thousand spirits swarming from God knoMrs where, 
Push the buried grasses 
And pull them. 
Calling : "Go out ! jump out !" 
And these little ones break through, 
Wink at us and taunt: 
"We are naked, fresh, and green. 
And. you are not I" 

LOVE-LYRIC 

Stir I 
Shake off sleep I 

Your eyes are the soul of clear waters — 
Pig«>ns 
In a city street. 

Suns now dead 
Have tudced away of their gold for your hair: 
My buried mouth still tastes their fires. 

A tender god built your breasts — 
. Apples of desire; 

[63] 



POETRY: A Magazine of Verse 

Their whiteness slakes the throat; 
Their form soothes like honey. 

Wake up! 
Or the song-bird in my heart 
Will peck open the shell of your dreams. 

* Sleep, my own, 
Soaring over rivers of fire! 
Sleep, my own. 
Wading waters of gold ! 

Joy is in my heart — 
It flutters around in my soul. 
. . . Softly — 
I hear the rosy dreams ... 



MIDNIGHT 

Midnight. The air is still. 
And yet there seems to be a sound 
Brooding in it, tearing. I hear it 
With all my quivering body 
But not with my cars. 

Suddenly it bursts — ^muffled, hoarse, detached 
From any earthly object. 
It is spring 
Charging through the night. 

[64] 



The Wilhw Tree 

THB WILLOW TRBB 

Willow tree, 
You are a little sea, 
With laving, foaming waves. 
I'll put my heart in there 
To float, 
To eddy in the eddies. 

STORM 

Storm, 
Wild one, 

Take me in your whirl. 
In your giddy reel. 
In your shot-like leaps and flights! 
Hear me call — stop and hear! 
I know you, blusterer! I know you, wild one! 
I know your mysterious call. 

THE RED LIGHT 

The red light is out. 
Sleep, gnaw your way 
In the dead-tired body 
And in the limbs which cry out. 

Enter, dawn! 
Hop about, little bird of light ! 

[65] 



POETRY: A Magazine of Verse 

Hop gently, with upturned claws, 
Over the thrown-down body, 
Over the extinguished hair. 

Tree which grows near the house. 
Spin and twine your shadows in there. 
Bum with your shadows, 
Wind around her 3rour tendrib. 
Limpid god I 

IN THB PARK 

I am slowly wheeling my child 
In the swarming park. 
The sky sheds skeins of darkness 
As delicate as light. 
The stars curl in their coverlets 
And allow the thin light 
To drift from between their fingers. 
The moon, like an earnest priest. 
Seems bent on holy business. 
But the trees are capricious: they display or conceal 
Part of a torso or a knee, or reveal 

A poem of branches. The little water (s thick with mystery 
As a lake in a forest. The grass 
Tickles my soles, and I can feel 
The earth under, rich 
Yet almost incoherent. 

[66] 



A Hymn to Night 



A HYMN TO NIGHT 

Come, mysterious night; 
Descend and nestle to us. 

Descend softly on the houses 
We built with pride, 
Without worship. 
Fold them in your veil, 
Spill your shadows. 

Come over our stores and factories, 
Hide our pride — our shame — 
With your nebulous wings. 

Come down on our cobbled streets : 
Unleash your airy hounds. 
Come to the sleepers, night; 
Light in them your fires. 

Max Michelson 



[67] 



POETRY: A Magazine of Verse 

TO A GOLDEN-CROWNED THRUSH 

Hurled from a fairy catapult, 

Up like a song gone somersaulting, 

Up like a dream to the white moon vaulting, 

I hear your liquid voice exult. 

Half to the moon I hear you sigh 
Like trees, and ripple on like brooks; 
The magic of the wild wood-nooks 
You shake out through the silver sky. 

Oh, tell me, are you bursting so 
With secrets that the woodlands tell 
That you must hurtle from the dell, 
And up, so all the air shall know? 

Are you a song and nothing else. 
Gone tumbling up the night of June? 
Is that your form against the moon. 
That trembles, palpitates and melts? 

Now your crescendos, note on note. 
Like one last challenge wildly pour . . . 
And then you float to earth once more — 
Unseen, as dreams and silence float. 

Richard Hunt 



i 

[69] 




SHEILA EILEEN 

I 
\ 

She wore a kirtle of bright crWoisie, 
A golden band her slender i^ist confined. 

The wise ones said that half aVsprite was she- 
So li^t her foot — and lighter \till her mind ! 

And thus it happened, on the eve\of May, 
In spite of many a threat and warning word, 

She with the fairies nimbly danced \away — 
And never any news of her was heaird. 

But when the summer rested on the gle^, 
And birds sang, and the roses blossom^ free. 

One said he heard a silver laugh again, \ 
And glimpsed a kirtle, gold and cramo^ie! 

CARNAGE ^ \ 

Over the valley swept the Autuxim jBood — ^. 
In showers of leaden bullets fell th6 j-ain ; \ 
The firs swayed to and fro, drunken whb pain,\ 
And wounded maples stained the earth wi 

Antoinette DeCoursey 




[69] 




This is my Indiana — 
There where those long low lines of blue 
Lie soft against the sky 

Beyond the trees that mark the rivet's course. 
And here these fertile fields 
Level and vast — 
A mother earth indeed, 
Generous and sacrificial. 
Oh, I could kneel and kiss 
This rich black loam I 

And here a gate that leads into a school, 
The gift of one plain man to generations. 
And over there the town upon the hill 
Where the ancient cross rises to our skies, too. 
Above the square of commerce 
Tlie court house stands; 

And Indians, soldiers, and muses of the Greek 
Riot together on its frieze. 



Here on this wide free road 
The farmer gives me greeting 
From his high seat atop a load of yellow com. 
He lives, untroubled king, upon a free domain 
Where tasseled fields stretch to the sun. 
Those golden ears 

[70] 




Indiana 

Are 83anboI of the pact he keeps 
With Indiana. 

Dear land of common good I 
Where on new soil 

The old world hopes are more than dreams; 
Where freedom, justice, opportunity, 
Wrested in blood and tears 

From the slow centuries, yj ^'j ^^ 

Are free, free gifts to all. Q\.^^^U^"'^*^ ^^''tv^ 

AN OLD SONG 

All day an old, old song 
Has edioed in my mind 
And will not be dismissed — 
A song that tinkles 
Of youth's endearing charms 
And love that will not die. 

It clashes with the thoughts 
Of this iron time — 
Its diasms of hate, 
Its lines of cleavage. 
Its unsparing sight 
And bitter revelations. 
The plougji is going through us; 
We are agjhast and stem. 

[71] 



POETRY: A Magazine of Verse 

Still tinkles faintly 
Out of a hundred years 
The sweetness of the little song. 
It sounds like some faint hidden brook 
In a lost fairy land 
Of the long ago. 

Daphne Kieffer Thompson 



FORGIVENESS 

Now Gfod be thanked that roads are long and wide, 
And four far havens in the scattered sky. 
It would be hard to meet and pass you by. 

And Gfod be praised there is an end of pride, 
And pity only has a word to say, 
While memory grows dim as time grows gray. 

For, Grod His word, I gave my best to you, 
All that I had, the finer and the sweet. 
To make — a path for your unquiet feet. 

Their track is on the life you trampled through — 
Such evil steps to leave such hallowing. 
Now God be with you in your wandering I # 

Charles L. O'Donnell I 

[72] 



SKETCHES IN COLOR | i- 

COLUMNS OF EVENING ^ t».#x^e-^ '^^^'"^ 

The evening seems the ghost of a purple-roofed house ^*-' J 

That once held repose. jfV^w^^'*^ 

The leaning columns 

Seem to have pulled down the sky to their tops 
With long, unseen arms. 

HAPPINESS 

The moon, like the ash-colored wraith of a candle-flame, 
Hangs bewildered, in a gaudy, blowing afternoon: 
So does your little joy hide itself. 

The crippled sunlight drags its huge orange limbs 
Over a tiny, squatting hill : 
So does your joy pass over me. 

At the end of a red, capering afternoon 
The dizzy trees bow slowly to the sun : 
So do I salute your happiness. 

SUFFERING 

The morning lowers its fire-veined back 
And quivers beneath the edged feet of winds: 
So do you stoop to your agony. 

[73] 



POETRY: J M a s 



0/ yt 



The air brushes up the fibrous souls 
Of Bowers, and sprinkles them between 
The flickering-sleeved arms of lime trees; 
So does your sorrow whirl you apart. 



I 



The brocade-robed night staggers against the wall of the 
sky, 
And fiercely sinks its woe-turbaned head: 
So does your grief lean upon me. 

A MAN TO A DEAD WOMAN 

Shaking nights, noons tame and dust-quiet, and wind- 
broken days, 
Were hands modeling your face. 
Yet people — the best of them — glanced at you, and passed on. 

And now, perhaps some of them meet to say little true 
things of you: 
Quickly weighing tiny stray chips of you — 
They who did not know you. 

THE WINDOW-WASHEHa 

Kneeling on high, flimsy scaffoldings, 
Their lives measured by the strength of ropes. 
The window- washers liquidly mumble little songs, 
That arc scooped away by the running air 
As flowers are swept up by racing children. . . . 



{'♦1 



The Window-washer t 



They descended, men whose stin is close over their bones, 
And whose hair is scant. 

"Why have you grinning faces of wood, 
You who have been carved by the white sword of the wind?" 
But the window- washers stared and tapped their foreheads, 
And trudged off to drink much beer. 

THE DEPARTMENT STORE 

This squinting, moon-faced man is measuring lavender silk 
For a muffled, little-eyed girl. 

(Only the counter lies between them, but they do not see 
each other.) 

This waxen-lipped girl, whose eyes are like burning silk, 
Is selling a frilled white waist 
To a siccpy-faccd old woman in flaring clothes. 
(They arc both secretly amused.) 

And this middle-aged, iron-bodied woman is wrapping 
ondy 
For « fat, delicate-faced man in black clothes. 

Rarely do thej^peep above the low wall between them 
To look upon each other. 

Maxwell Bodtnheim J 



["] 



POETRY: A Magazine of Verse 

PYROTECHNICS 



Our meeting was like the upward swish of a rocket 
In the blue nig^t 
I do not know when it burst ; 
But now I stand gaping, 
In a glory of falling stars. 

II 

Hola! Holal shouts the crowd, as the catherine-wheels 
sputter and turn. 
Hola! They cheer the flower-pots and set pieces. 
And nobody heeds the cries of a young man in shirt-sleeves, 
Who has burnt his fingers setting them ofiF. 

Ill 

A King and Queen, and a couple of Generak, 
Flame in colored lights; 
Putting out the stars, 
And making a great glare over the people wandering among 

the booths* 
They are very beautiful and impressive, 
And all the people say ''Ah I" 
By and by they begin to go out. 
Little by little. 
The King's crown goes first, 

[76] 



Pyrotechnics 



Then his eyes, 

Then his nose and chin. 

The Queen goes out from the bottom up, 

Until only the topmost jewel of her tiara is left. 

Then that, too, goes; 

And there is nothing but a frame of twisted wires, 

With the stars twinkling through it. 

Amy Lowell 



I 



TO A FLOWER 



Child whose fairy eye 
Is filled with azure dreams, 
Gazing on the sky — 
Youth today must bleed 
On battlefields and die. 
Thy loveliness, it seems. 
Is but a lie. 



Suzette Herter 




[77] 



POETRY: A Magatine of Verse 
A LITTLE GIRL 



I see a little girl sitting bent over 
On a white stone door-step. 
In the street are other children running about; 
The sluulows of the waving trees flicker on their wfait 
dresses. 

Some one opens the door of the house 
And speaks to the child on the steps. 
She looks up and asks an eager question : 
The figure shakes her head and shuts the door; 
The child covers up her face 
To hide her tears. 

II 

Three children arc playing in the garden — 
Two boys and an awe-struck little girl. 
TTiey have plastered the summer-house with clay. 
Making it an unlovely object. 

A grown-up person comes along the path. 
The little girl runs to her 
Asking the same question, "Where is my mother?" 
The grown-up person docs not make any answer. 
She looks at the summer-house and passes along the path. 

[78] 



The little g:irl goes slowly into the house 
And dtmbs the stain. 



The little girl is alone in the garden, 
A white-haired lady of whom she is afraid 
Comej to find her and tell her a joyful thing. 

The little girl runs to the nursery. 
The young nurse is doing her hair in front of the glas 
The little girl sees how white her neck is 
And her uplifted arms. 

Tomorrow they will be gone — they will not be her 
They are going to find Her. 
The young nurse turns and smiles, 
And takes the little girl in her anns. 

IV 

The little girl is travelling on a railway train. 
Everything rushes by very fast — 
Houses, and children in front of them, 
Children who arc just staying at, home. 

The train cannot go fast enough, 
The little girl is saying over and over again, 
"My mother — my onliest mother — 
I am coming to you, coming very fast." 

[791 



POETRY: A Magazine of Verse 



The little girl looks up at a great red building 
With a great doorway. 
It opens and she is led in, 
Looking all about her. 
A lady in a white dress and white cap comes. 

After a long, long time 
A man in a black coat comes in. 
He says, "She is not well enough, I am afraid." 
The little girl is led away. 
She always remembers the words 
The man in the black coat said. 

VI 

The little girl is waiting in the big hallway, 
In the house of the white-haired lady, 
At the end of the path she can see the summer-house 
With its queer gray cover. 

The hall clock ticks very slowly. 
The hands must go all around again 
Before the mother will come. 

Now it is night, 
The little girl is lying in her bed. 
There is a piano going somewhere downstairs. 
She is telling herself a story and waiting — 
Soon She will come in at the door. 

[80] 



A Little Girl 

There will be a swift shaft of light 
Across the floor, 

And She will come in with a rustling sound. 
She will lie down on the bed, 

And the little girl will stroke her dress and crinkle it 
To make the sound again. 

Pretty soon the mother will step slowly and softly to the 
door. 
And quietly turn the handle. 
The little girl will speak and stop her 
Asking something she has asked many times before — 
"My Father?" 
But the mother has never anything to answer. 

VII 

The mother and the little girl are sitting together sewing. 
Outside there is snow. 
A woman with a big white apron 
G)mes to the door of the room and speaks. 

The mother drops her work on the floor 
And rum down the stairs. 
The little girl stands at the head of the stairs 
And cries out, "My Father!" but no one hears, 
They pi»s along the hall 

The little girl creeps down the stairs. 
But the door is closed. 

[81] 



POETRY: A Magazine of Vtrst 

vin 

The little girl is hcU and rcxJced — 
Held so tightly it hurts her. 
She moves herself free. 

Then quickly she puts her face up close, 
And there is a taste of salt on her tongue. 

IX 

In a bed in an upper chamber, 
A bed with high curtains, 
A woman sits bowed over. 
Her hair streams over her shoulders; 
Her arms are about two children. 

The older one is trying to say comforting things. 
The little girl wants to slip away — 
There are so many people at the foot of the bed. 

Out of the window, across the yellow river, 
There arc houses climbing up the hillside. 
The little girl wonders if anything like this 
Is happening in any of those houses. 



Many children and grown-up people 
Are standing behind their chairs around a bright t 
Waiting for the youngest child to say grace. 
[821 



It is vciy troublesome for the youngest child 
To get the big words out properly. 
The little girl interrupts and says the grace quickly. 

The white-haired lady of whom the little girl is afraid 
Is angry. 

The little girl breaks away and runs 
To the room of the bed with the high curtains. 

She rushes in — 
The room is empty. 
She comes back to the table, 
But she does not dare to ask the question. 
She remembers the great red building 
Wtih the great doorway. 

XI 

The little girl is trying to read a fairy story. 
There is nobody in the garden, 
TTiere is nobody in the house but the white-haired lady. 



Someone comes ti 
She does not want 
She is afraid. 



tell her her father is there. 
see him — 



The front door is open; 
There is rain, and leaves are whirling about. 
A carriage with two horses, 

[83] 



POETRY: J Magazine «./ Vtrtt 

And a coachman hj^ up, holding a long *^ip, 
Stands waiting in front of the door. 

The little girl is holding on to the banisters. 
They take away her hands from the banisters 
And lead her to the carriage in front of the door. 
Someone gets in behind her. 
The carriage door is shut. 
The little girl dran-s herself to the far corner; 
They drive away. 
The little girl looks back out of the window. 

XIII 

The little girl is in & strange house, 
Where there are young men called uncles 
Who talk to her and laugh. 

A large lady sits by the table and knits and smiles. 
In her basket are different colored balls of wool — 
Pretty colois, but not enough to make a pattern. 
There is a curly soft little black dog 
That hides under the table. 
The uncles pull him out 

And he tries to hold to the carpet with his claws. 
The little girl laughs — 
But at the sound she turns away 
And goes up to her room and shuts the door. 
Pretty soon the large lady comes to her 
And takes her on her lap and rocks and sings. 

Mary JUk 
[84] 




I 
I 




EDITORIAL COMMENT 



5 ORE than three years ago, when Poetry was 
in its first volume, I went to New Yorfc to 
look over that part of the field, incidentally 
attending the third— or possibly it was the 
fourth — annual banquet of the Poetry Society 
of America, which had been founded in 1910. Last month 
I took another survey, including Boston as well, and it may 
be in order to record a few casual and desultory imprcseions 
of change and contrast. 

In January, 1913, the art was still in the old era, and 
one saw few signs of a change of attitude among the consti- 
tuted authorities. The voices most conspicuous today had 
not then been heard, except, in some instances, in Poetry — 
such voices as Masters, Frost, Lindsay, Sandburg, Tagore, 
Rupert Brooke, and the whole group of Imagists. Four 
numbers of Poetry had appeared, and one of The Poetry 
Journal, but the older magazines were still using verse as 
an end-of-thc-pagc decoration, and the public was serenely 
indifferent. 

Now all is changed. It is as though some magician had 
waved his wand — presto, the beggar is robed in scarlet. In- 
deed, the present danger may be that poetry is becoming the 
fashion — a real danger, because the poets need an audience, 
not fitful and superficial, but loyal and sincere. When six 
hundred persons willingly pay five good dollars apiece to 




[85] 



J 



POETRY: A Magazine of Verse 

feast in honor of Mr. Masefield, and hear him and certain 
American confreres exchange farewells, the public would 
seem to be awakening to some kind of an interest in the art. 

And other evidences are plentiful. A'well known poet 
tells this story : 

The other day I went into Brentaiio's-^or the firM time in 
years, ai it happened, to gel «omebody|i poetns. Now Brentano'a 
used to keep its modern poetry on a little tahle away back in a 
dark corner uodcr the itair, so to that modest corner I went. But 
when I reached it, I found no poetry, only shop-worn boyi' books. 
"How 19 this?" I said to the clerk, "have you given up poetry 
altogether?" The man turned on me t withering glance — "Poetry," 
he said, pointing majestically, "i* up in from." 

And up in front I found tt, in high piles on the foremost table; 
and moreover crowds of people, three or four deep, were reaching 
over each other to buy it. 

And here is the testimony of a Chicago lover of the an : 

New York ihop, a loaded table with a placard marked, "Modern 
Poetry— Ten Cents a Volume." "And we can't sell it at that price!" 
said the clerk. 

Today I find a tableful of modern verse placed among the best 
sellers at McClurg's, and when I express satisfaction the man 
replies, "Yes, that's what Miss Monroe's magazine has donet" 

In order not to claim ever>thing, this leads me to that 
other evidence of the renaissance — its magazines. Is it pos- 
sible that only three and a half brief years ago we were alone 
in the field ? Now a new organ of the art strikes its chord 
every few months, and the air is a-quiver with projects still 
untuned. We have not only Others, the high-pitched instru- 
ment of the young intransigeants, but Contemporary Verse, 
of Philadelphia, which speaks with a Quaker accent for 
youth's conservatism, since youth is by no means always a 



[86] 



^^f radical 
■ to offei 



Down East 



^ 



radicaL And now Mr. Braith^vaiic. over in Boston, is going 
to offer us next month The Poetry Rrview of Amrrica — no 
less — bringing to the service of this new sheet, of a format "as 
Urge as the New Republic," his love of the art and pro- 
longed study of its manifestations in America. And there 
are whispers of still newer schemes in the New York air. 

As for the poets, they seetn as numerous as sparrows 
through the cool spring sunshine, and almost as quarrelsome. 
This is not to deride hut to declare ! I have always admired 
the vigor and enthusiasm with which battles of the intellect 
are fought in Paris — their schools and groups, their cliques 
and labels, their solemn assumptions and fine distinctions — 
all the absurd machinery through which alone, after all, a 
great metropolis can stage her play and put her artists before 
their world. Well, here in our newer world we are begin- 
ning to learn the lesson. Perhaps the French cubist painters, 
who arc now so numerous in New York, have brought with 
them a spark from the Parisian altar-flame ; at any rate, our 
poets have caught fire, and an editor who would not be 
scorched by leaping flames must walk warily between the 
various groups with banners. 

At a part\' given by the editor of Others these fires 
burned low, and this editor was able to attach faces and 
voices to long familiar names — like William Carlos Williams, 
Alfred Krcymborg, Skipwith Cannell, Horace Holley, Cloyd 
Head — without once being called down for an old fogey 
astray in a youthful world. The freshest topic was Zoe 
Akios' play. The Magical City, which was new at the 

[87] 




POETRY: A Majoti 



./ V, 



Bandbox Theatre, and which apparently had "got across" 
the footlights to U'itics and public, and now to these various 
groups of young poets and artists. 

Afterwards I saw the play, and was inclined to agree 
that Miss Alcins had really achieved poetic drama from 
the rather difEcult standpoint of modem romance. The feat 
was a bit acrobatic ; now and again I thought the play was 
going to lose its precarious balance — not when the captain 
of industry spoke his stern few words to the much desired 
girl, but when the truly poetic poet stood dithyrambically 
speechifying at jhim nHth the murderous pistol in his hand. 
Yet in spite of this occasional excess of eloquence the lines 
were full of life and informal rhythmic beauty. And the 
play had that sine qua non, dramatic magic — it acted well, 
and rounded up with style to an unexpected and shapely 
climax. On the whole a most promising beginning for the 
young St. Louis poet-playwright. 

Of a Tuesday evening the Poetry Society of America 
held one of its regular monthly meetings, with the president, 
Mr. Edward J. Wheeler, in the chair, and Mr. Lawrence 
Housman as guest of honor. Resolutions were passed in 
honor of the late Ruben Dario, the great Nicaraguan poet 
who did so much to reunite the sundered fragments of the 
Spanish -speaking world, and whose dream of a closer Pan- 
American sympathy brought him to this country during the 
first year of the war and the last of his life. The speech of 
Dario's young compatriot, Sefior Salomon de la Selva, made 
me understand, as never before, the importance of the poet 

188] 



Down Eatt 



in Lai in -American life, his power as prophet and leader. 
Will our statesmen, dreaming of Pan- Americanism, ever talcc 
this him ? 

In Boston I attended a meeting of the New England 
Poetry Society, which happened to be entertaining the Har- 
vard Poetry Club. I own to intense interest in the work of 
this latter group of students — twenty or more young men 
who have gathered together, without aid from the Harvard 
faculty, for the study — and practice — of modern verse. 
Many brief poems were read by eight or ten different authors, 
and their quality, as Mr. John Gould Fletcher and I agreed, 
was surprisingly high. 

I wish I could remember names — in order to check them 
up when we hear from those young poets later. One of 
them read a sonnet or two which had real verbal and rhyth- 
mic magic. Two quatrains by another moved me. A young 
man from the West read a gay and slashing free-verse satire 
on Brattle Street, and another offered us a ballad of really 
distinguished quality, showing a feeling for recurrent tragic 
iliythim, and a delicate use of a varied refrain. In fact, 1 
could scarcely overpraise the work of these students, or the 
enthusiasm which has carried them so far in the one short 
year since their club was founded. Young poets tn other 
colleges should organize similar societies. And at last thcHf 
various faculties will be compelled to take notice. nJ^ 



(89) 




POETRY: A Magazine of V 
REVIEWS 



Chicago Poemi, by Carl Sandburg. Henrv Holi & Co., 

New York. 

In this American oielling-pol the English language be- 
comes the mother tongue of the sons of Perse ani) Slav and 
Swede; and through that language, and the literature born 
in it, more and more as time goes on, must blow tropic and 
arctic airs, winds from East and West, perfumes of Araby 
and salt spray from the northern seas. No prophet can 
measure the ultimate enrichment of our art through this en- 
richment of our racial strain. Provincialism will hardly 
survive, and our democracy of precepts and precedents — an 
Anglo-Saxon inheritance, like our language, from the pat- 
terned and fenced-in past — will have to expand to the 
larger tests of cosmopolitanism and human brotherhood. 

From certain of these newer Americans and their sons 
have come of late at once the harshest challenge and the 
most idealistic appreciation of this incomplete, but urgent and 
hopeful, democracy which they find here. Such voices as 
Sandburg the second-generation Swede, Giovannitti the 
Italian, Roscnfeld the Yiddish Jew, Ajan the Syrian, are 
uttering at once the challenge and the ideal with a passion 
rare among poets of the Anglo-Saxon stock. Of these latter 
at this moment only Edgar Lee Masters, and C. E, S. Wood 
of Oregon, occur to mc as bent upon the same business — 
in the deepest sense a poet's business — of seeing our national 



[90] 




I 

I 



Chicago Granite 

life in the large — its beauty and glory, its baseness and shame. 

Carl Sandburg has the unassailable and immovable earth- 
bound strength of a great granite roclc which shows a 
weather-worn surface above the soil. Like such a rock, he 
has a tender and intimate love of all soft growing things — 
grasses, lichens, flowers, children, suffering human lives. 
One would no more question his sincerity than that of the 
wind and rain. His book, whether you like it or not, 
whether you call it poetry or not, is fundamental in the 
same majestic sense — it is a man speaking with his own 
voice, authoritatively like any other force of nature. 

I remember the emotion with which I first read many 
of these poems — in type-written sheets sent to Poetrv over 
two years ago by some friend of the poet. That first convic- 
tion of beauty and power returns to me as 1 read them 
again. This is speech torn out of the heart, because the 
loveliness of "yellow dust on a bumble-bee's wing," of "worn 
wayfaring men," of ships at night, of a fog coming "on 
little cat feet,"— the incommunicable loveliness of the earth, 
of life — is too keen to be borne ; or because the pain of "the 
poor, patient and toiling," of children behind mill-doors, of 
soldiers bleeding in the trenches — all the unnecessary human 
anguish — is too bitter for any human being, poet or not, 10 
endure in silence. 

Mr. Sandburg knows his Chicago, and the book as a 
whole gives us the city in a masterpiece of portraiture. The 
town — its streets and people, its parks and broad lake and 
the sand-dunes beyond — the whole half-formed metropolis — 

[91] 





POETRY: A Magaz 



is painted in broad vital strokes and rich colors by the loving 
unflattering hand of an artist. Here are a few details: 

LOST 

Desolate and Iodc 

All uighi long on ihe lake 

Where fog trails and miit crecpi, 

The nhiitle ai a boat 

Calls and cries unendingly, 

Like some lost child 

Id tcaii and trouble 

Hunting ihe harbor's breiil 

And the harbor'* eyc». 

USED UP 

Red rosei, 

Crushed 
In the raia and wind 
Like moulhs of wdiucd 
Beaten by the fiits of 
Men using them. 
O little roses 
And broken leaves 
Aod petal wisps: 
You that so fiung your crimson 
To the sun 
Only yesterday. 

Mr. Sandburg's free-verse rhythms are as personal 1 
his slow speech or his massive gait; always a reverent beat- 
ing-out of his subject. They are rugged enough at times — 
as when he salutes Chicago, "stormy, husky, brawling," and 
sets her high among cities, "with lifted head singing, so 
proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning." In 
some of the war poems his rhythms pound like guns boom- 
[92] 



Chicago Granite 

ing, and when he talks back to the loud-mouthed Billy 
Sunday the swing of a smashing prose hammer is good 

enough. 

But again, under softer inspiration, this poet's touch be- 
comes exquisitely delicate. Indeed, there is orchestral rich- 
ness in his music; he plays divers instruments. Such lyrics 
as The Great Hunt, Under, Beachy, At a Window, The 
Road and the End, have a primal, fundamental beauty, a 
sound and swing as of tides or bending grain. Many of these 
Poetry has had the honor of printing, but this one is new : 

UNDER 

I am the undertow 

Washing tides of power, 

Battering the pillars 

Under your things of high law. 

I am a sleepless 
Slowfaring eater, 
Maker of rust and rot 
In ^our bastioned fastenings, 
Caissons deep. 

I am the Law, 

Older than you 

And your builders proud. 

I am deaf 
Id all days, 
Whether you 
Say 'V"** or "no I" 

I am the crumbier: 
To-morrow. 

The spirit of the book is heroic, both its joy and its 
sorrow. It says, "Keep away from the little deaths!*' 

H.M. 
[93] 



POETRY: J Magazint of Vt 



THE INDEPENDENTS 



■ 



Catholic Anthology — 1^14-1^1$. Elkin Mathews, London. 

Compared to Mr. Braithwhile's annual poetry salon this 
book might be called a Salon d' Independentt. We have 
Mr, T. S, Eliot's very interesting attempt to bring vorticism 
into poetry by breaking up thoughts, moods, scenes, into frag- 
ments, and making them play on one another. We have 
several pure-flame pieces from Mr. Masters' Spoon River. 
We have Miss Monroe's poem from Peking written in 1910, 
where we already see Poetry walking freely, with all the 
ropes and chains off. Walking? — 1 should perhaps say dan- 
cing, but I believe that sober thoughtful walking ts a form 
of dance in itself. Wc have Harold Monro's real and "cute" 
Cal and interesting Suburb. And we have a very beautiful 
Williams — William Carlos Williams' In Harbor. 

Alice Corbin, in One City Only, gives her heart to us 
entirely for a while, laying bare every nook and cranny of 
her mood. 

In Mr. Rodker's interpretation of a young girl's passion — 
the drawing of her heart, and the fear in it, before she sub- 
mits to her lover, and the terror and happiness after — a study 
purposely misnamed Twilight and Lunatic — I do not find 
the reverence for sheer truth which I find in Tolstoi's treat- 
ment of these situations, nor the gentleness and tenderness 
of Maeterlinck, by whom this poet seems to be strongly in- 
fluenced. It is carelessly read Maupassant; or Bourget and 
worse. 

[94] 



The Independtntt 

[ liked both Carl Sandburg's — The Harbor and The 
Road and the End. lo the latter the poet allows the subject 
(o carry him lo a certain extent instead of his carrying the 
subject ; but the reader is carried along just as strongly. The 
pulse of the line in The Harbor is normal ; in The Road and 
the End it is a little fast; yet I think Mr. Sandburg is better 
in these rhythms than in his later and slower ones, where he 
i$ often a little monotonous. 

The selection from Mr. Krcymborg's works does not do 
that writer justice; the poem about the toothless pirate is 
much better than the one in this volume, Orrick Johns' 
rather crude symbols are not to my taste. Nor am I entirely 
salislied with "M. B.", our Chicago friend Maxwell Boden- 
heim. In my opinion this writer seems to believe that his 
readers arc not deeply critical, and does not perfect his work. 
It is perhaps less noticeable in In Old Age than in Cruci- 
fixion, for instance, where he begins with a concrete image 
and ends with a cliche. Allen Upwards' Chinese Lanterns, 
in spite of their new wisdom, seem to have something hoary 
in them — like alt good lore. 

Douglas Goldring's tapestry story makes one who has not 
read anything else of his wonder what that fellow has up 
his sleeve. There is an interesting experiment in conversa- 
tion-poetry by T. E. Hulme; and a preface-poem by the 
W. B. Yeats of 1916, who is a somewhat diiJerent poet from 
the earlier Yeats, a poet of deeper wisdom and more austere 
rhythms. 

Of the selection from Mr. Pound — well, whenever I read 

[95] 




POETRY: J Ma, a 



of r. 



him I seem to forget for awhile what I am reading iin™ 
think of the man — of his self-abnegation. He is to me the 
most interesting figure in the recent awakening of poetry. 
Like Cezanne he always seems to say, "I am nothing — my 
work is everything." What Cezanne would have said with 
a scowl and in difEcrent terms, Mr. Pound cries out with a 
"damn you!" perhaps: "Do you think this piece too simple, 
crude, thin? But this is the way!" He will trans- 
late another writer instead of writing something of his own 
for you to admire, if he believes it will show you the way. 
He will be vulgar, noble, profane, just to show you. One 
only wishes that he would stop brooding about himself in 
his weaker moments, and forget the legend that he is so much 
disliked. 

Of course one misses many writers he would like to Hnd. 
To me a collection of modern poems is incomplete without 
H. D. and four or five other writers. 

I do not quote anything from the book because I believe 
every intelligent person interested in poetry should own it. 
Max Mic kelson 



TWO BELGIAN POETS 

Maurice Maeterlinck, a Critical Study, by Una Taylor. 
Dodd, Mead and Co., New York. 

Poems by Maurice Maeterlinck, done into English by Ber- 
nard Miall. Dodd, Mead and Co. 

Poena of Emile Verhaeren, selected and translated by Alma 
Strettell. John Lane, London. 

[%) 



Two Belgian Poets 

The Cloister, a Play in Four Acts, by fimilc Verhaeren, 
translated by Oscnan Edwards. Houghton Mifflin Co. 



Maurice Maeterlinck and fimile Verhaeren are both vital 
figures in the literature of their country; in fact, they cannot 
be far from the same age. For twenty years English-speak- 
ing people have been familiar with Maeterlinck's works; he 
has been a force in their literature, and has given to their 
poetry and drama a new infusion of life. Yet Verhaeren, 
writing in French for three decades, influential among French 
writers everywhere, and conspicuous in the new movement 
in poetry — Verhaeren, who has bared the bleeding soul of 
the Belgiuni of today, has only recently been at all widely 
translated into English. Of course we have heard of his 
genius for years, but he has not been a master in our thought, 
a name upon every English and American tongue, as has 
Maeterlinck. We must look for a reason. 

The author of America, when asked what, in his opinion, 
caused the widespread affection for his song, replied that he 
was sure it was the word my. He said that he had at first 
written Our country, 'tis of thee, but that this line hadn't the 
right go. He changed the universal to the more intimate 
word, and the song became famous. 

Verhaeren paints splendid landscapes, flaming narratives, 
large beliefs, larger hopes, gives out a wealth of sound and 
color, makes ennobling pictures of life's ever^'-day. Maeter- 
linck enters the very sanctuary of self, touches its inmost 
problems — terror, love, dread, sacrifice, sickness, death. Thus 

[971 




POETRY: J Ma,,z 



of V, 



to humanity in general, humanity not yet emancipated from 
self, he naturally makes the stronger appeal. 

From the first Maeterlinck was fortunate in his trans- 
lators, for Richard Hovey put a poet's enthusiasm and sym- 
pathy into his version of the early plays, plays whose mag- 
nificent promise none of his later works has quite fulfilled. 
Alfred Sutro has done almost as well with his later works. 
Now Miss Una Taylor, in her Critical Study, shows herself 
especially fitted to wrestle with his inscrutabilities, to pierce 
his subtleties, and give us, on the whole, a right estimate of 
his work. She could deal with her subject comprehensively 
even without the aid of her wide knowledge of other sub- 
jects. She is at home with Juliana of Norwich, with Serenus 
de Cressy, with Novalis, the latter so near to the heart and 
mind of Maeterlinck. She keeps well in march with the 
great Belgian in her philosophical analysis — her exhausilcss, 
1 might say her fatiguing, researches into the mystic. In 
considering the earlier dramas, she lays stress upon the malady 
of humanity tingeing their symbolism, and says too little of 
their matchless beauty. For in spite of dank moats, pestilen- 
tial marshes, sickly minds, these earlier plays have a far 
greater charm and significance than we may find in any of 
Maeterlinck's other work. Though heavy with Greek fatal- 
ity, though we may liken each play to a bas-relief of a group 
of little weeping Attic sirens, they arc a fresh and absolutely 
authentic presentation of the attitude of imaginative youth 
toward the vague panorama of life, and they live forever 
with the magic dews of dawn still wet upon them, 

[98] 



Two Belgian Poets 

Mr. Miail faced a formidable task when he undertook to 
put all the Belgian's poems into English verse. Maeterlinck's 
manner Is admittedly involved, and it seems as if this trans- 
lation often made him more obscure than he really is. If we 
were at sea in the French, we are more at sea in the English. 
In spite of the translator's assurance that he is literal, he is 
not always so — how could he be? Yet in many of these 
poems he has made the charm of the original show through 
the veil of translation, and we can see that he has brought 
to his task the mind of a scholar and the insight of a poet. 

It is a requisite, I think, for a good translation of poetry, 
whether it be of the same metrical construction as the orig- 
inal or not, whether it be in verse or in prose, that no thought 
and no image should be added to the thought and image of 
the original. Maeterlinck wrote a few poems of such simple 
and unclouded diction that a child could apprehend them. 
Now, clothed in English, we find their simple patterns elab- 
orated, filmed over, to meet the metrical exigencies of another 
tongue. 

In The Academy several years ago appeared a call for 
translation into English verse of a little song by Maeterlinck, 
the text of which was printed in its Paris letter. This song 
was from a volume first published under the title of Douzr 
Chansons, and it is, perhaps, the simplest lyric Maeterlinck 
ever wrote. Many replies were received, of which The 
Aeadtmy printed two. I have kept these as a reminder of 
the difficulties to be met in trying to slip into one language 
die thought of another. Let us consider the last stanza': ■ :■ ■* 

[991 




Now see the differences and evasions in the English, par- 
ticularly in the last two lines. This is the version by W. G. 
Fulford: 

And if he ahauld qucition ilill 
Of (he closing sleep? 
—Tell him. lell him that I smiled,— 
Smiled — lest he ihould weep , . . 
This is the second, by E. C. M. Dart : 
Can I tell him of the lait 
Late nrlfl hour ere yet thou passed 7 
— Only say ray imilei >o giy 
Flashed to keep his tears anay. . . 

And here is Mr. Miall's later version, as printed in the 
book before us: 

If he aik me of the hour 
Whea vou fell asleep? 

—Tell 'him. teit him ihm I smiled 
Lest my love should weep . . . 

Maeterlinck has not said a word about sleep. But then, 
hoar does not rhyme with n-eep in English. Not one of these 
three translators has said, simply and directly, what Maeter- 
linck himself said: "Tell hira that I smiled, lest he should 



Maeterlinck's poems are the expressions of vague soul- 
conditions, pictured by azure glass, immobile lilies, poison- 
plants, symbolical growths, ennui, and he has made them 
cxqjjisitely musical. These same soul- vaguenesses do not 
^secm .-to yield in the English language the perfume of the 

[100] 




Two Belgian Pottt 



original. However, Mr. Miall has done wonders with Mae- 
terlinck's intricacies, and many oE his translations stand the 
test of tests — they read well in English. The Hospital might 
be on English poem ; it is very strong, and in it the trans- 
lator has caught the cunning of the master's word and image. 
The h'hite Birds has all the listlcssness and somnolence of 
Les Paons Blanct. In Glances we find the spirit of the 
original, and many another poem is admirable and impressive. 
Miss Alma Strettell's version of some of Vcrhacrcn's 
poems must be disappointing to anyone who opens the book 
eager for communion with this ardent spirit whose song has 
moved the world. There are here and there good lines, 
artistically chosen words, where we almost find what we 
are looking for. The author has followed the text of the 
original faithfully, yet her work is without flavor. Her 
paths are distinctly the paths of tradition. She never makes 
Vcrhacrcn's rain or snow fall but she makes them fall amain. 
In her hands his mesh is never woven, it is woven amain. 
She has a childlike way of setting down words as if they 
were wooden blocks — "green banks steep." "far waves dim." 
The Rain is perhaps her best achievement; here she has 
caught the picture and the beautiful monotony of language to 
a certain extent. In The Bell-Rtnger she has again almost 
succeeded — yet where is the shiver of the original, one of 
Verhaeren's most dramatic and wonderful poems? Why 
does she continually force the great man to pad out his lines 
by inserting the word sof Fancy Vcrhaeren padding his 
lines! In our search for the real Verhaeren, who is a master 



[101] 



POETRY: A Magai 



./ V, 



of vert libre, wc are always halted and turned aside by some 
commonplace word. 

Mr. Edwards is more successful with his version of 
£,1? Cloitre, which, though written in 1899 and staged in 
1900, was suggested by [he poet's experiences in a monastery 
near Chimay in the early eighties. The play, which alter- 
nates prose and verse, is forceful and striking in its purpose. 
Parts of it suggest Le Jongleur de Noire Dame, and, as wc 
read on through the sweetness and austerity, strains of Mas- 
senet's music seem borne along the lines. But in Le Jongleur 
we have only the fragrance and beauty of monastery life; in 
Le Cloiire there are the fragrance and beauty, but also the 
fierce struggles of mind with mind, suspicion against faith, as 
the monks wrangle and argue. For even cloistral walls may 
not keep out the ferment of hate, revenge, anger, jealousy, 
where men gather to say complin, worshipping, not Christ, 
but each his inward idol. Verhaeren's own giant thoughts 
must have passed through many such dramatic upheavals 
before Catholicism dropped from him, and before he could 
make Militien say : 

Whin failh fell. shRdovriog our shores, al tcaglh 
Came Science and sang her onn Magnificat. 

And before he could create TTie Prior, who sighed for — 

Men of impoging race, who from thtir youth 
Are wont (o dominate large tracts of time. 

Surely Verhaeren, professedly no symbolisle. has given us 
in the characters of this play many a symbol of the church : 
in the gentle boy-monk, service; in Balthazar, pride, and 
final atonement through sacrifice. 
[102) 



Two Belgian Poets 

Today, when little Belgium has almost ceased to exist, 
it is extraordinary that two such poets should still be speak- 
ing for her, to remind us that a nation is measured, not by 
geography, or even by military supremacy, but by the genius 
and heroic spirit of her greatest men. J. F. 



OUR CONTEMPORARIES 

A NEW SCHOOL OF POBTRY / 

Replacing the outworn conventions of the I-am-bic school, 
we have now the I-am-it school of poetry. (Note: Les 
I-am-its are not to be confused with Les rm-a-gists, who are 
already out-classed and demode.) The following synopsis, 
telescoped from the new Others anthology, gives the salient 
features of the school: 

I 

I am Aladdin. 

Wanting a thing, I have but to snap my fingers. 



Yes, yes, I believe you 

I could not doubt .... 

Roh Carlton Brown 

II I-KONS 

I broke 

I named her .... 

How can I serve! 

How can I be kind or unkind! 



I shall pass over these 

I shall crush them .... 

[103] 



POETRY: A Magazine of Verse 

I dislike men loTing too many women 
They are wrong .... I am right 

I will make new sounds 

and new jumps and gestures . . . 



I will gobble up everything . . . 

SHp Cmnnm 

III SONG OF I GIRL 

I am not afraid of my own heart 

I am not afraid of what 

I am not afraid 



I am not afraid 



There are three of us (Fs) ; the little girl (I) used to be; the girl 
(I-I) I am; the girl (I-I-I) I am going to be . . 

Mary Corm Dmvies 

IV 

I am the possessor and the possessed. 
I am of the unborn. 



Am I then left 

Am I . . . 

I who possess and am possessed 

Am I ? 

V HERMAPHROD-I-TIS 

Behold me! 
The perfect one! 
Epitome of the universe! 
Toe crystal sphere, — 

Behold me! 
The perfect onel 
The crystal sphere! 
Reflecting perfect sex, 

[104] 



F. Gnpg 



A New School of Poetry 

Reflecting perfect being, 
Reflecting God 1 

A. Grog 

VI 

I seek my revenge in the start— 

The quiet knowing stars. 

I seek my revenge 

Let those who rule, rule. 
They shall not rule my stars 
/ Nor mi; 

For I am one with my star& 

I laugh .... 
I laugh .... 

And I laugh 

wf . Hardpence 

VII 

It is not I . . . 

No, it is not I 

Alf, Kreymhorg 

VIII 

I measure myself ^ 

Against a tall tree. 
I find that I am much taller 
For I reach right up to the sun, 
With my eye; 

And I 

W. Stevens 

i 
t 

We regret to say the printer announces that there are no 
more Ts in the font. A, C, H^ * « -fL^^A. 

[105] 



POETRY: A Maga 



THE CRITICS SENSE OF HUMOR 

In a recent interview in the New York Times, Mr. 
Robert Underwood Johnson, erstwhile editor of The 
Century, suKis up his objections to what he calls the form- 
lessness of modern poetry by an objection not based upon 
form, but spirit. This is what he says; 

Now \i anything is charactcrUlic ai the "prose librist" it ii hit 
lack of a Bcnie of humor. A seme of humor is the finest critic the 
artist can have. Poetry, having the "high seriousness" thai Arnold 
considetB necessary to it, has not needed the guidance of the sense 
of humor, as for enample, Wordsworth's great ode. Bui in the 
main a sense of humor is vrhat keeps the poets as nell as other 
people from making fools of themselves. 

It is hardly true thai a sense of humor will keep the 
poet from making a fool of himself; it will, however, permit 
the poet to see that he is making a fool of himself — from 
which he may derive a double satisfaction. If great poetry 
may be achieved without the guidance of a sense of humor, 
poetry is none the less great because of its presence ; and if I 
had to choose between thera as companions in the desert, I 
think I should take Chaucer and Shakespeare rather than 
Wordsworth and Milton. 

But if "a sense of humor is the finest critic an artist can 
have," let's hope that the "prose librist," — as Mr. Johnson 
calls Edgar Lee Masters, and also, by inference, Walt Whit- 
man — let's hope that Mr. Masters tempers all the criticism 
he receives with at least as much humorous appreciation as 
that bestowed by this critic upon Mr. Masters' work. 

Or is it possible that the "high seriousness" of criticism 
does not need the guidance of a sense of humor ? 
[1061 





t postpone until the June num- 
e-hundred dollar prize offered 
[ closed March first, but 
:ateful consideration. 



NOTES 

The editors regret that they i 
ber ihe decision in regard to ihi 
for a one-act play in verse. The c 
ihe reading of many plays requires t 

Mr. Allen Upward, of London, is the author of Sceatrd Leaves 

fr»m a Chlneit Jar, nhich aroused intense interest when first pub- 
ished in Poetry for September, 1913; also of that revolutionary 
philotophical work. The Nrvi Wcrd. and many romances. 

Mr. Ma« Micheison, and Mr. Maiwdl Bodenheim, both of 
Chicago, hav« also appeared before in our pages. The latlcr's 
first book of verse mill soon be published by John Marshall, New 
York. 

Mary Aldis (Mrs. Arihur T.), also of Chicago and a former 
contributor, has just published, through Duffield & Co., Fiayt for 
a Small Stage, and will soon follow il with Flaih-llghu. a volume 
of dramatic monologues in free verse. 

The latest book of Miss Amy Lowell, of Boston, is Six French 
Fofls, published by the Macmillan Co., who will bring out a new 
book of ber verse in the autumn. 

Antoinette de Couraev Patterson (Mrs. T. de H.), of Phila- 
delphia, will toon publish her first book of verse. 

Of the pneis new to our readers: 

Mr. Richard Hum, of Boston, was for 1 while one of the editori 
of The Paltry Journal. 

Rev. Charles L, O'l>onncll, of the faculty of the University of 
Notre Dame, Indiana, will soon publish, through Laurence J. 
Gomme, New York, his first book of verse. 

Daphne Kicffer Thompson (Mrs. H. D.) nov< of Muskegon, 
Mich., and Miss Suzette Hertei, of New York, have published 
little at yet. 

BOOKS RECEIVED 

ORIGINAL VEIUE; 
Tkt Siadovr Eater, by Benjamin De Cisseres. Alb. & Chas. Boni, 

New York. 
Sangi and Satirei, by Edgar Lee Masters. Macmillan Co. 
London — One Sovemher, bv Helen Mackay. Duffield k Co. 
Etlia and Other Veriet. by Niwbold Noyes. Sherman, French k Co. 
Idth, by Walter Conrad Arensberg. Houghton Mitflin Co. 

[107] 



POETRY: A Maaaz 



0/ y. 



I ferit, by Conrad Aiken. 
damson. LoDgmana, Green 
; Fort 



Trum and Moviet. and Olhtr Talti i. 

Houghion MiOlio Co. 
Songi From ike South, by John Ernesi A 

& Co. 
Cedt and Htroti, by J. Brookei More. Tbrash-Lick Co. ; 

Smilh, Ark. 

Ytarningi, by William Estill Phlpps, Gorham Pcess. 
Propl/i, by Arthur Kclchum. Richard G. Badger. 
The Open Read, by Lucy E. Abel. Gorham Preii. 
Wild Apple4. by Jeanne Robert Foster (Julie Ollivier). Sbemian, 

French Co. 
General William Baolfi Enters Into Heaven, and Olhtr Paems, by 

Vachel Undiay. Macmillati Co. 
Sta and Bay, by Cbaile* Whatton Stork. John Lane Co. 
Singing Fires of Erin, by Eleanor Rogeri Cox. John LRne Co. 
The Tonguei of Tail and Other Poemi, by William Francii Bernard. 

Worker)' Arl Prei«, Chicago. 
Wolfi-Bane Rhymes, by John Cowper Powys. G, Arnold Shaw, 

New York. 
Poemt Descriptive, Narrative and Refleclivf, by C. A, Doyle. The 

School Journal, Winchester, O. 
Phacion—a Dramatic Poem, and Other Poems, E. A- Doyle. Pri- 
vately printed. 
Battle and Other Poems, by Wilfrid Wilson Gibson. Macmillan Co. 

AHnfOl.OGIU AND TKANILArlOtlS: 

Others, Edited by Alfred Kreymborg. Alfred A. Knopf, New York. 
High Tide — Songs of Joy and Vision from the Prestni-Day Poets 

of America and Great Britain: Selected and Arranged by Mrs. 

Waldo Richards. Houghton Mifflin Co. 
Gustaf Froding: Selected Poems, Translated from the Swedish with 

an Introduction by Charles Wharton Sloik. Macroillan Co. 

Mate — The Heart of Youth, by Hermano Hagedorn. 
O'Conor. John Lane Co. 



The Cre 

Mac 



The Fairy Bride, by Norreys Jepfal 
fkose: 

Adveitiurri While Preaching the GosPtl of Beauty, by Vachel Und- 
iay. Macmillan Co. 

Shakespeare's Theater, by Asfalcj' H. Tborndike, Ph. D,, L. H. D, 
Macmillan Co. 



1108] 






Vol. VIII 
No. Ill 



JUNE, 1916 



■boi 



lOOKER WASHINGTON TRILOGY 
fVatmgton J 

I A NEGRO SERMON — SIMON LECREE 

( To bf read in your own variety of negro dialect) 

^ GGREE'S big house was white and green. 
His cotton-fieids were the best to be seen. 
He kepi strong horses and fine swine. f^'X ' 
He had cool jugs of cider and wine. 
His garret was full of curious thing; 
Books of magic, bags of gold, [\ 




And rabbits' feet on long twine strings. 
But he went down to the Devil. 



»«■ 



Legree he sported a brass- buttoned coat, 
A snakc-)kin necktie, a blood-red shirt. 

11091 



v; 



POETRY: A Magazine of Vent 

Legree he had a beard like a goat. 
And a rhiclc hairy neck and eyes like dirt. 
His puffed-out cheeks were fish-belly white. 
He had great long teeth and an appetite. 
He ate raw meat 'most every meal, 
And rolled his eyes till the cat would sqacaL 
His fist was an enormous sire 
To mash poor niggers that told him lies: 
He was surely a witch-man in disguise. 
But he went don-n to the Devil. 

He wore hip-boots, and would wade all day 
To capture his slaves who had fled away. 
But he went down to the Devil. 

He beat kind Uncle Tom to death, 
Who prayed for Legree with his parting breath. 
TTien Uncle Tom to Eva flew, 
To the high sanctoriums bright and new; 
And Simon Legree stared up beneath, 
And cracked his heels, and ground his teeth: 
And went down to the Devil. 

He crossed the yard in the storni and gloom; 

He went into his grand front room. 

He said, "I killed him, and I don't care." 

He kicked a hound, he gave a swear; 

He tightened his belt, he took a lamp, 

[110] 



m — Simon Lefm 



A Negro Sermon — Simon Ltfm 

Went down cellar to the webs and damp. 
There in the middle of the mouMy floor 
He heaved up a slab, he found a door — 
And went down to the Devil. 

His lamp blew out, but his eyes burned brighcJ 

Simon Legree stepped down all night — 

Down, down to the devil. 

Simon Legree he reached the place. 

He saw one half of the human race; 

He saw the Devil on a wide green throne. 

Gnawing the meat from a big ham-bone, 

And he said to Mister Devil: 

"I sec that you have much to eat — 
A raw ham-bone is surely sweet. 
I see that you have lion's feet; 
I see your frame is fat and fine, 
I see you drink your poison wine — 
I Blood and burning turpentine." 

F And the Devil said to Simon Legree: 
"I like your style, so wicked and free. 
Come sit and share my throne with me, 
And let us bark and revel." 
And there they sit and gnash their teeth, 
And each one wears a hop-vine wreath. 
They are matching pennies and shooting craps, 

[111) 



POETRY: A Magazine of Verse 

They are playing poker and taking naps. 
And old Legree is fat and fine: 
He eats the fire, he drinks the win< 
Blood and burning turpentine-^ 
Down, down with the Devil; 
Down, down with the Devil; 
Down, down with the Devil. 



II JOHN BROWN 

(To be sung by a leader and chorus, the leader singing the 
body of the poem while the chorus interrupts with the 
question.) 

I've been to Palestine. 

What did you see in Palestine? 
I saw the Ark of Noah — 
It was made of pitch and pine. 
I saw old Father Noah 
Asleep beneath his vine. 
I saw Shem, Ham and Japhet 
Standing in a line. 
I saw the tower of Babel 
In a gorgeous sunrise shine — 
By a weeping-willow tree 
Beside the Dead Sea. 

[112] 



John Brown 



I've been to Palestine. 

What did you see in Palestimt 
I saw abominations 
And Gadarene swine. 
I saw the sinful Canaanites 
Upon the shewbread dine^ 
And spoil the temple vessels 
And drink the temple wine. 
I saw Lot's wife, a pillar of salt 
Standing in the brine — 
By a weeping-willow tree 
Beside the Dead Sea. 

I've been to Palestine. 

What did you see in Palestimf 
Cedars on Mount Lebanon, 
Gold in Ophir's mine, 
And a wicked generation 
Seeking for a sign ; 
And Baal's howling worshippers 
Their god with leaves entwine. 
And . . . 

I SAW THB WaR-HORSB RAMPINO 

And shakb his forelock fine — 
By a weeping-willow tree 
Beside the Dead Sea. 

I've been to Palestine. 

What did you see in Palestine? 

[113] 



POETRY: A Magazine of Verse 

Old John Brown, 

Old John Brown. 

I saw his gracious wife 

Dressed in a homespun gown. 

I saw his seven sons 

Before his feet bow down. 

And he marched with his seven sons, 

His wagons and goods and guns, 

To his campfire by the sea, 

By the waves of Galilee. 

I've been to Palestine. 

What did you see in Palestine? 
I saw the harp and psaltery 
Played for Old John Brown. 
I heard the Ram's horn blow. 
Blow for Old John Brown. 
I saw the Bulls of Bashan — 
They cheered for Old John Brown. 
I saw the big Behemoth — 
He cheered for Old John Brown. 
I saw the big Leviathan — 
He cheered for Old John Brown. 
I saw the Angel Gabriel 
Great power to him assign. 
I saw him fight the Canaanites 
And set God's Israel free. 
I saw him when the war was done 

[114] 



John Brown 



In his rustic chair recline — 
By his camp-fire by the sea, 
By the waves of Galilee. 

I've been to Palestine. 

fFhat did you see in Palestinef 
Old John Brown, 
Old John Brown. 
And there he sits 
To judge the world. 
His hunting-dogs 
At his feet are curled. 
His eyes half-closed, 
But John Brown sees 
The ends of the earth, 
The Day of Doom. 
And his shot-gun ubs 
Across his knbbs — 
Old John Brown, 
Old John Brown. 



[115] 



POETRY: A Magax'tttt o/ Vtrtt 

in KING SOLOMON AND THE QUEEN OF SHBBA 

"And when the Queen of Sheba kfard of the fame of Solo- 
mon, . . . she came to prove him u'ith hard questions." 

(Thii chorus ti in sdaptatjon of (he tUDC, Yau tkali tt free titieii 
the Good Lord ttis yoti fret. It is supposed lo be sung ■( a cimp 
meeting of ihousandt of colored people, the crond weaving «nd 
dancing and hjmniing after their accuitomed manner.) 

Interlocutor. The Queen of Sheba came to see King Solomon. 
Men's Leader. I was King Solomon. 
IVomen'i Leader. 1 was the Queen. 
Congregation. You shall be king and queen. 

Reigning on mountains green, 

Happy and free 

For ten thousand . . . y. .e. .a. .r. .s. 

Interlaeatar.Yi. .\. .n. .g . . . Solomon he had four hun- 
dred oxen. 

Field Hands. We were the oxen. 

Congregation. You shall feel goads no more. 
Walk dreadful roads no more, 
Free from your loads 
For ten thousand ■ ■ . y. .c. .a. .r..s. 

Interlocutor, K. .i. .n. .g . . , Solomon he had four hun- 
dred sweethearts. 

fVomen's Chorus. We were the sweethearts. 

Congregation — (delicately). You shall dance round again, 
Cymbals shall sound again, 
[116] 



Kinp Solomon and the Queen of Sheba 

Wild-flowers be found 

For ten thousand years . • . y. .e. .a. .r. .s. 

Interlocutor. And every sweetheart had four hundred swans. 

Women s Chorus. We were the swans. 

Congregation — (delicately). You shall spread wings again, 

Fly in soft rings again, 

Swim by cool springs 

For ten thousand . . . y. .e. .a. .r. .s. 
fn/^r/octt/or. K. .1. .n. .g . . . S. .o. .1. .o. .m. .o. .n . • 

K..i..n..g . . . S. .o. .1. .o. .m. .0. .n . . . 

Women's Leader. The Qu. .een. . of Sheba asked him like 
a lady, 
Bowing most politely: 
''What makes the roses bloom 
Over the mossy tomb, 
Driving away the gloom 
Ten thousand . . • y. .e. .a. .r. .s?" 

Mens Leader. K..i..ng.. Solomon made answer to the 
lady, 
Bowing most politely: 

"They bloom forever thinking of your beauty, 
Your step so queenly and your eyes so lovely. 
That keeps the roses fair. 
Young and without a care, 
Making so sweet the air 
Ten thousand . . . y. .e. .a. .r. .s. 

[117] 



POETRY: A Magazine of Verse 

Interlocutor, King Solomon he had four hundred sons. 
Field Hands. We were the sons. 
Congregation, Crowned by the throngs again, 

You shall make songs again, 

Singing along 

For ten thousand . . . y. .e. .a. .r. .s. 

Interlocutor. He gave each son four hundred prancing ponies. 
Field Hands. We were the ponies. 
Congregation. You shall eat hay again, 

In forest play again, 

Rampage and neigh 

For ten thousand . . . y. .e. .a. .r. .s. 

Mens Leader. K..i..n..g Solomon he asked the Queen 
of Sheba, 
Bowing most politely: 
"What makes the oak-tree grow 
Hardy in sun and snow, 
Never by wind brought low 
Ten thousand . . . y. .e. .a. .r. .s?*' 

fVomen's Leader. The Queen of Sheba answered like a lady. 
Bowing most politely: 

"It blooms forever thinking of your wisdom. 
Your brave heart and the way you rule your kingdom. 
That makes the oak secure. 
Weaving its leafy lure, 

[118] 



Kinff Solomon and the Queen of Sheia 

Dreaming by fountains pure 

Ten thousand . . . y. .e. .a. .r. .s." 

Interlocutor. The Queen of Sheba had four hundred sailors. 
Field Hands. We were the sailors. 
Congregation. You shall bring spice and ore 

Over the ocean's floor, 

Shipmates once more, 

For ten thousand . . . y. .e. .a. .r. .s. 

fV omens Leader — (softly). The Queen of Sheba asked him 
like a lady, 
Bowing most politely: 
"Why is the sea so deep, 
What secret does it keep 
While tides a-roaring leap 
Ten thousand . . . y. .e. .a. .r. .s?" 

Men's Leader — (solemnly and ornately). K..i..n..g. . . 
Solomon made answer to the lady, 
Bowing most politely : 

"My love for you is like the stormy ocean — 
Too deep to understand, 
Bending to your command. 
Bringing your ships to land 
Ten thousand . . . y. .e. .a. .r. .s.' 



» 



Interlocutor. K..i..n..g . . . S. .o. .1. .o. .m. .o. .n 
K..i..n..g . . . S. .0. .1. .0. .m. .0. .n. 

[119] 



POETRY: A Mm^mxiue of Verse 

Con§re§aium — (ra^lj, with hemvf mcceuis). The teedi of 

all his diieb were set with diamonds. 
FUU Hamds. We were dbe diieftains. 
Congregatum. You shall be pnmd again. 

Dazzle the crowd again. 

Laughing aloud 

For ten diousand • . . y. .e..a..r. .s. 

Interlocutor — (slowlf ami softlj). K. .i. .n. .g Solomon he 

had four hundred shq[)herds, 
Field Hands. We were die shq>herds. 
Congelation. You shall have tordies bri|^t, 

Watdiing the folds at night, 

Guarding the lambs aright 

Ten thousand . . . y. .e. .a. .r. .s. 

Mens Leader — (loud) and Field-hand Chorus — (softly). 

K. .1. .n. .g Solomon he asked the Queen of Sheba, 
Bowing most politely : 
"Why are the stars so high, 
There in the velvet sky 
Rolling in rivers by 
Ten thousand . . . y. .e. .a. .r. .s?" 

Women's Leader — (loud) and Women's Chorus — (softly). 
The Queen of Sheba answered like a lady. 
Bowing most politely : 
"They're singing of your kingdom to the angels; 

[120] 



King Solomon and the Queen of Sheha 

They guide your chariot with their lamps and candles. 

Therefore they bum so far — 

So you can drive your car 

Up i/i^iere the prophets are 

Ten thousand . . . y. .e. .a. .r. .s." 

Interlocutor — (loud and full throated). 

K..i..n..g . . . S. .0..1. .0. .m. .o..n • • • 

K..i..n..g . . . S. .0. .1. .0. .m..o..n • • . 

King Solomon he kept the Sabbath holy, 

And spoke with tongues in prophet-words so migjity — 

We stamped and whirled and wept and shouted, 

"Glory!" 
We were his people. 



Mens and Women s Leadert — (very softly and slowly). 
You shall be wild and gay. 
Green trees shall deck your way, 
Sunday be every day 

Ten thousand . • . y. .e. .a. .r. .s . . . 
K..i..n..g . . . S. .0. .1. .0. .m. .0. .n . . . 
K..i..n..g . . . S. .0. .1. .0. .m. .0. .n . . . 

Vachel Lindsay 



[121] 



POETRY: A Magazim of Ferse 

IN SUMMER 



DBVICB 




For a proud poet ^ . ,^^>T^ 

The bitter chrysanthemum ^ J^-^ 

Untamed by frost, 
Spending gold in bleak weather. 

II 

Mine shall be 
A lean geranium in a pot 
Climbing the cottage pane. 
Old leaves yellow and drop off, 
New green puts out. 
I like it for the pungent scent it gives 
When you bruise it. 
Though lacking sun it may never afford 
A scarlet flower. 

JBUNB FILLB 

Beneath the ledges 
Lie the pools — 
Cupped in the ruddy rock, 
Bright pools of mountain water, 

[122] 



J tune Fille 



Unimaginably clear. 
There is no sky, no distance ; 
The friendly wood leans near. 

In wet, luxurious moss I plant my feet, 
Unimaginably white; 

It pleases me to think of my white body here, 
Released in fair water, to charm 
A delicate lover. 



PA8TBL 

She has a clear, wind-sheltered loveliness. 
Like pale streams winding far and hills withdrawn 
From the bright reaches of the noon. Dawn 
Is her lifting fancy, but her heart 
Is orchard boughs and dusk and quietness. 



A GALLANT WOMAN 

She burst fierce wine 
From the tough skin of pain, 
Like wind that wrings from rigid skies 
A scant and bitter gleam, 
Long after the autumnal dusk 
Has folded all the valleys in. 

[123] 



POETRY: A Magazine of Vent 



The elder's bridal in July, 
Bright as a cloud! 
A ripe blonde girl, 

Billowing to the ground in foamy petticoats, 
With breasts full-blown 
Swelling her bodice. 

But later 
When the small black-ruddy berries 
Tempt the birds to strip the stems, 
And the leaves begin to yellow and fall off 
While late summer's still in its green. 
Then you look lank and used-up, 
Elder ; 

Your big bones stick out, 
You're the kind of woman 
Wears bleak at forty. 



I'll take my constant pleasure 
In a willow-tree that ripples silver 
All the summer. 

And when the winter comes in greasy rags 
Like a half-naked beggar. 
Lets out the plaited splendor 
Of her bright and glancing hair. 

Clara Shanafelt 

[124] 



POEMS OF HAPPINESS \ 

I entered the Cathedral — ^>^ 

Not a Gothic one, with broadly spreading arches, 
But with dwarfed limbs, tortured 
By economy. 

It was draped in feeble mourning, 
And a purple memorial to a ponderous bishop 
Hung before the altar of Christ. 

To the right was a candle-lit shrine, 
Of raw colors. 
Before it knelt a man — 
Eyes closed, hands raised, lips moving — 
A passion of prayer. 

Perhaps he had been caught in a crime — 
Was smitten with disease — owed money, 
And was afraid. 
Perhaps — ^perhaps — 

But there was the faith — 
Filling and surrounding him. 
Filling the air, filling the church 
With clouds of ecstasy. 

And he crossed himself. 
As if he marked the sign 

[125] 



POETRY: A Magazine of Verse 

On his soul — 
And on the world. 

Then he took his paper 
And his hat, 

And went to catch the trolley. 
Oh, my dim eyes! — 
How often divinity wears 
A derby hat, 
And carries 
A sporting extra ! 

FAIR WEATHER AND I HAPPY 

The sky, yesterday heavy as earth. 
Made me alone bear its weight. 
Today it flies — floats — 
High as Thy mercies: 
And where the light is most glorious 
There am I — at the zenith — 
Singing with the sun. 

HAPPINESS 

A blue sky, with the morning's freshness in it ; 

A live wind on the hill-top blowing free; 
The thin clear pipe of some close-perching linnet: 

Beyond the hills the sunlight on the sea. 

[1261 



y 



A Chad's Grace 

A child's gracb 

Down in time for breakfast! 
And a clean green dress, 
And my hair 
Curled in six — 
Three on one side 
And three on the other; 
And I 

Very well washed 
All over. 

Opposite me is the Baby 
With his bib- 
Pink 

With white elephants on it 
And there is mother 
And father; 
And we bend our heads 
Over our blue plates with oranges. 
Our grace is silent — 
You can talk that way, you know, 
To God, 

Though sometimes you have to scream 
At Baby- 
To make him pay attention 
If he is playing, and you want him to come. 
After grace is over 
I feel quite new 

And very dean. Rosalind Mason 

[1271 ' 



POETRY: A Magaxlne of Ver 
MAGIC 



We passed old farmer Boothby in the field. 
Rugged and straight he stood, his body stwled 
With stubbornness and age. We met his eyes 
That never flinched or turned to compromise, 
And "Luck!" he cried, "good luck!" — and waved an i 
Krtoited and sailor-like, such as no (ami 
In all of Maine could boast of; and away 
He turned again to pitch his new-cut hay. 
Wc walked on leisurely until a bend 
Showed him once more, now working toward the end 
Oi one great path ; wearing his eighty years 
Like banners lifted in a wind of cheers. 



Then we turned off abruptly — took the road 
Cutting the village, the one with the commanding 
View of the river. And we stiodc 
More briskly now to the long pier that showed 
Where the frail boats were kept at Indian Landing. 
In the canoe we stepped, our paddles dipped 
Leisurely downwards, and the slim bark slipped 
More on than in the water. Smoothly then 
Wc shot its nose against the rippling current, 
Feeling the rising river's half-deterrent 
Pull on the paddle as we turned the blade 
To keep from swerving round; while wc delayed 
To watch the curious wave-eaten locks; 



[128J 



Or pass, with lazy turns, the pi'cnic-rocla. 

Blue eels flew under us, and fishes darted 

A thousand ways; the once broad channel shrunk. 

And over us the wise and noble-hearted 

Twilight leaned down ; the sunset mists were parte 

And we, with thoughts on tiptoe, stunk 

Down the green alleys of the Kcnnebunk. 

Motionless in the meadows 
The trees, the rocks, the cowt. 

And quiet dripped from the shadows 
Like rain from heavy boughs. 

The tree-loads started ringing 

Their ceaseless silver bells: 
A land'locied breeze came swinging 

Its censer of earthy smells. 

The river's tiny canon 

Stretched into dusky lands: 

Like a dark and silent companion 
Evening held out her hands. 

Hushed were the dawn's bravados, 
Loud noon was a silenced cry: 

And Quiet slipped from the shadows 
As stars slip out of the sky. 

I It must have been an hour more, or later, 

I When, tramping homeward through the pincy w 



POETRY: J M a 



of Verse 



Wc felt the years fly back, ihe brotherhood 
Of forests took us — and we saw the satyr! 
There in a pool, up to his neck, he stood 
And grinned to sec us stare, incredulous — 
Too startled to remember fear or flight. 
Feeling the menace in the crafty night. 
We turned to run — when lo, he called to usl — 
Using our very names he called. We drew 
With creaking courage down the avenue 
Of birches till we saw, with clearing sight, 
(No longer through a tricky pale-green light) 
Familiar turns and shrubs, the friendly path — 
And Farmer Boothby in his woodland bath! 
The woods became his background ; even' tree 
Seemed part of him, and stood erect, and shared 
The beauty of that gnarled serenity, 
The quiet vigor of age that smiled and squared 
Its shoulders against Time. And even Night 
Flowed in and out of him, as though content 
With such an clement; 
Happy to move about a spirit quite 
As old, as placid and as confident. 



Sideways we turned. All glistening and unclad 
He leaped up on the bank, light as a lad. 
His body in the moonlight dripping stars. 
We went on homeward, through the pasture-bars. , 



[130] 



l-^. 



4 

cs 

fol Lowing 



Beauty shall not lead mc — 
No, on no more passionate and never-ending quests. 
I am tired of stumbling after her 

Through wild, familiar forests and strange morasses — 
Tired of breaking my heart and losing my sleep, fol Lowing 
a fitful gleam. 

Beauty, you shall fly before mc no longer — 
Smiling, looking back over your shoulder with 

blushes — 
Wanton, trickster, trifler with weak men ; 
Demanding all and giving nothing in return 
But furious dreams and shattering visions. 

Beauty. I shall have you — 
Not in imagination only, but in the flesh. 
You will pursue me with untiring breath, you i 

by my side wherever 1 go. 
Even in the muddy squalor and the thick welter of ugliness, 
You shall run to me and put your anus about my hip8ji 

cling to me ; 
And, tiy as I will, you will never be shaken off. 



1 presi 



Ugliness, 
lip^^idj 



Beauty, I know you now — 
And knowing (and loving) you, I will thirst for you na 



longer . 



[131] 



4 



POETRY: A Magazine of Verse 



Yes, I shall have you — 
For I shall run on recklessly 
And you will follow after I 



Louis Untermeyer 



i 



MOON IN THE MORNING 

What dost thou, so ghostly white 

In the halls of day? — 
Facing the triumphant lis^t, 

Reveler astray? 

When thy silver court was kept, 
Thou and thine were free, 

And the sun, while dotards slept. 
Did not spy on thee. 

Scent of jasmine, voices low, 
Dost thou seek them yet — 

Lovers of the long ago 
Thou canst not forget? 

Day's gay banners all unfurled 
Flaunt from sea to sea: 

All the work of all the world 
Calls the sun and me. 

[1321 



Moon in tk$ Morning 



Nay, thou shalt not bid me standi 

Nay, I will not yield I 
Strong to-day in my right hand 

Is the brand I wield. 



Then aroint thee, shadow fly! 

Wherefore haunt me so — 
Hanging mournful in the sky, 

Pale and loath to go? 

Mary Eleanor Roberts 



[ 



ECHO 

Love said farewell, yet not with moan or tears 

Did he recall the gladness of the years 

We walked together. With a little laugh — 

Ah, but no weeping ever could be half 

So sad! — out from my open door he went. 

His bowed wings torn, his breathing slow and sp«nt. 

And, though I know not whither he is gone, 

I hear his laughter from the dusk till dawn! 

Charlotte Becker 



[133] 



POETRY: A Magazine of Verse 

THE WOOD BROOK 

: V 

Like some wild child mat lau^ and weeps, 

Impatient of its noother^ arms. 

The wood brook from the^hillside leaps, 

Eager to reach the neig^bo^g farms: 

Complaining crystal in its ^roat 

It bubbles a protesting note. \ 

\ 

The wild-flowers that the forest weaves 
To deck it with are thrust aside ^^^ 
And all the little happy leaves, \ 
That would detain it, are denied: \ 



It must be gone; it does not care; ^ 



\^ 



Away, away, no matter where. ^n 



Ah, if it knew what work awaits 
Beyond the woodland's peace and rest. 
What toil and soil of man's estates. 
What contact with life's sorriest — 
A different mind it then mig^t keep 
And hush its frenzy into sleep. 

Make of its trouble there a pool, 
A dim circumference filled with sky 
And trees, wherein the beautiful 
G>ntemplates silence with a sigh, 



[134] 



The Wood Brook 



As mind communicates with mind 
Of intimate things they have in kind. 

Encircled of the wood's repose, 

Contentment then to it would give 

The peace of lily and of rose, 

And love of all wild things that live; 

And let it serve as looking-glass 

For m3rths and dreams the wildwood has. 



THE DEAD CHILD 



She made the garden her fast\friend: then she 
And it in Autumn faded quietly, 
The sunlight went. And then tlW fell asleep, 
And lay beneath one covering whif^ and deep. 

Now all at once the garden wakes to H^t : 
And still the child sleeps on clasped closb in night. 
"Where dost thou hide?" the garden seem^to purr. 
And asks again and yet again for her. 

The azure wind seeks softly for her face ; N 
Peers ia^he house: "Come from thy hiding pliii^I 
Thou dost thysdf>a^wrong! Where art thou gon4? 
Come let us see the new frock tfaotf -hast on." \ 

Madison Cawein 

[135] 



POETRY: 4 Ma,t 



DESIRE 






1 would scod these dreams of yoiirs and mine re-boming; 

I would send our love out to seek nobk flight — 

Over the interminable mountains of the morning, 

Over the endless oceans of the night. 

1 would put the lightness of it into laughter, 

I would put the sorrow of it into song — 

That should go echoing on for ages after, 

Tliat should make glad the world whole aeons long. 

I would tell in deathless paint the glory of it; 

I would tell in immutable stone its majesty — 

To halo it and hold a light above it, 

To temper it with immortality. 

I would spin it to the heavens, spsR on span . . 

Were I but — oh, a little more than man I 



THE DRINIfER 

Tired of the world and weary of its w^s. 

Lonely and old and broken now, he nods - 

Among the idols he mistook for gods, 

A ruin in the wreck of yesterdays. 

And since his mad past must be hung in haze. 

Since he must fog his senses lest he think 

How youth and hope and all were lost in drink. 

Since be must never know how high lie pays, 

1136] 



The Drin 



He sits and sips and gives himself to dreams, 
Fond dreams wherein he sees himself again 
The lad who thought that life was all it seems. 
And now there is a glory in his eyes; 
Forgotten are the bitterness and pain 
Of the me years^-this is his paradise. 



*^ 



fc 



OU CAME AND WENT 



ii^ the silent night, 



All as a bird sails throu^ 

On swift wings bent, 
Leaving a wake of music in its fli^t, \ 

You came and went. \ / 

H. Thompson Rjck \ 



.^ 



\'' 



/ 



./- 



^ 



/ 



X 



[137] 



POETRY: A Mafai 



LAMENT 



A 



A daughter wailt by the coffin of her mother: 

O my little mother! O my little comforter! O my little 
defender! Thanks unto your little hands that brought me 
up, thanks unto your little lep that walked beside me, 
thanks unto your mind that taught me, thanks unto your 
little mouth that spoke to me so kindly. 

Who shall speak to me kindly now, who shall teach 
me kindly? My little mother, who shall defend me now? 
to whom shall I complain now? with whom shall I apeak? 
The cuckoo of the woods ceases to ciy, but I never ahall 
cease. 

My mother, you do not sigh any more. My mother, 
you do not groan, my little mother. Say a word to me, give 
consolation to my mournful little heart. 

All the night I am trying to talk to you, yet I hear not a 
word from my little mother. 

O my little mother, the little guest! O my little mother, 
the wanderer! 

Ah, they build for my little mother a home of white 
boards without a window of glass, without a door. You 
will not see, my mother, the sun rising, neither the sun 
setting. 

TTie last time, the last little short while now we are 
talking to each other. Oh, if I could, I would wake up my 
dear little mother. 



(1381 




Lameal 

Oh, when will you come to me, when will you \ 
From which country shall I await you? From which corner 
shall I greet you? Mother mine, day and night I shall 
wylk, but rU meet you nowhere, but I'll find you i] 



Ah, my little mother, you have left me, a little orphan, 
and now where am I to go, where am I to conceal myself, 
where find a shelter? Ah, every wind will blow on me now, 
every rain will find me now. 

O my little mother, the summer will come, the cuckoo 
will cry in the woods, and I shall think that those are the 
^irords of my mother. 

P I shall come to the grave of my little mother, and there 
on the path I'll find the green grass growing and the white 
little clovers curling. 

My father, my old wise head, will you recognize my little 
mother there? Oh, my father, meet my little mother, I 
pray you, take her by her white little hands, and place her 
on the bench of the Souls of the Dead. 

O ray little mother, say thanks unto your young little 
brothers and your little neighbors who build for you a new 
little home without windows and without doors. Oh, my 
little mother, how will you bear the new boards? Oh, how 
will you bear the brown earth on you? 

From a Lilkuanuin folk-song — translated by 
K leaf as Jtirgeliom 

(139) 



I 




POETRY: A Magaxint of Vertt 
EDITORIAL COMMENT 

VARIOUS VIEWS 

|OMEWHERE 1 have read t quaini 
myth of a goblin who, blowing the fog out 
of his face, started a tempest which went 
careering around the world. Now and then 
1 feel like that goblin. Is it possible that 
less than four years ago poetry was "the Cinderella of the 
arts" ? Already a great wind is blowing her ashes away, 
and on the horizon arc rolling dust-clouds which may conceal 
a coach and four — or is it an automobile? 

For there must be some gift of the gods in the large and 
many-colored cloud of words which filk our eyes and ears. 
Never before was there so much talk about poetry in 
this western world, or so much precious print devoted to its 
schools and schisms. This is at it should be, no doubt. It 
may be evidence of that "poetic renaissance" which some of 
us profess already to be living in ; or at least it may initiate 
that "great audience" which will be ready for the renaissance 
when it comes. A breach has been made, we may hope, 
in that stone wall of public apathy which tended to silence 
the singer ere he began. By and by he may win — who 
knows? — academic honors, prizes, travelling scholarships, ad- 
mission to Arts Clubs and American Academics at Rotne, 
even prices that would mean "a living wage." 

The different points of view from which modern poetiy 

may be regarded have been conveniently epitomized this 

[140] 



yarious Vinos 

iprmg in Chicago by a number of lecturers. Wc may pass 
over Mr. Masefield, because his tallc did not touch upon 
his contemporaries, and come to the series given at the Little 
Theatre by Mr. Maurice Browne, Miss Amy Lowell, and 
Mr. Arthur Ficke. 

Mr. Browne dealt chicfiy with the spiritual austerities of 
the art. He warned us — the American people — that we 
were shirking truth, shirking life, and that our poets, with 
few exceptions, were too consistently expressing thb atti- 
tude. He repeated the familiar — and, I think, essentially 
superficial — accusation that our ideab are wholly material, 
and compared our contemporarj' poetry unfavorably with 
that of England — a land which seemed to him, under the 
stress of war, vibrant with beautiful and noble song. Al- 
though some of us could not agree with this estimate of 
relative values, and even wondered whether the speaker had 
penetrated to the heart of our democracy, we were stirred by 
his plea for the primal simplicities, the austere aspirations, 
which underlie great poetry. 

Miss Lowell was more specific. Her subject was the 
new movement in poetry, which began, she was gracious 
enough to say. with the publication of our first number, 
in October, 1912. She grouped the more significant first 
appearances around this date, Pound coming a little before, 
and Lindsay, Frost. Lawrence, Sandburg, Masters, the ima- 
gists and the Geoi^ian group a little later. By the new 
movement she meant that definite separation from the Vic- 
torian tradition — that greater austerity of meaning, economy 



ti«i 




POETRY: A Ms, a 



of V, 



of phrase and freedom of rhythmic movement — of whicli 
imagism, her special topic, became one important manifesia- 
tion. The heredity of the new movement may be traced, 
she thought, in two streams : the imagists from Coleridge 
and Poe, through the French symbolists whom these two 
poets greatly influenced; and other free-verse poets from 
Whitman, who, though almost without prototype, may be 
considered something of an admixture of the ethical spirit 
of Wordsworth with the free, beauty-loving spirit of Cole- 
ridge. The speaker then presented, in her most brilliant 
and persuasive manner, her ideas of the laws and boundaries 
of imagism, confining her discussion of it chiefly to the 
group represented in the Houghton-Mifflin anthologies. 

Mr. Fickc's contribution to the symposium was a plea 
for the older forms. Free verse he thought an instrument 
of narrow range, and imagism effective only in the presen- 
tation of detached details, incapable of larger completeness. 
The poet finds freedom, he thought, only in chains; the 
closer his metric, the greater his joy in fitting his pace 
to the pattern of its measures. 

And finally, before the Fortnightly, the oldest of Chi- 
cago's women's clubs, Mr. Witter Bynner disposed of the 
"new movement" altogether. Modern poetry — his topic 
confined him to British poets — began, in his opinion, with 
Kipling and the Shropshire Lad, it continues with Alfred 
Noyes and Maseficld and Moira O'Neill (who is greater 
than Yeats!), and the dear public is always right about It. 
He was vagarious enough to admit that Mr, Hueffcr's On 
Heaven, though neither Kiplingesque nor Noyesy, is the 

1142] 



Various Viev 



r finest poem of the decade, but he worked off a loag-chcrishcd 
grudge against the imagists, hurling more adjectives at their 
devoted heads than one oiay find in all their poems. Mr. 
Pound especially was shown up as chat son of shame, the 
good poet gone wrong — a darlc mixer of poisons lor the 
innocent. 
It might be in order to submit — if the point were not 
too obvious — that much of Kipling, and possibly a very 
little of Alfred Noyes, will have the kind of permanent rank 
in poetry which Verdi and Massenet will doubtless hold in 
music, and that the Shropshire Lad must always be cher- 
ished as one of the pure singers, as exquisite in simplicity 
and clarity as a fine soprano voice ; but that all of these, how- 
ever valuable, stand outside the procession, "the movement." 
They are not the torch-bearers of the art, bringing a new 
motive and manner, passing on the flame to the future, like 
Tchaikovsky and Debussy and Richard Strauss in music. 
Probably it is loo early to determine whether Masters or 
Sandburg, Pound or Huefler, or any of the imagists whom 
Miss Lowell admires and Mr. Bynner despises, will be 
proved torch-bearers in this high sense. Some of us think 
that the wise future will accord that rank to a few of 
them. If not. then there are no torches aflame in the art 
at present, and no "movement" to talk about. 

But in all the talk there is something which does not 
quite satisfy, still less inspire. No doubt the note of parti- 
san ardor is the proper and inevitable thing; thus have the 
battles of art been fougfit from the beginning of time, when- 
ever and wherever art has been vital and sincere. Yet I 
[143] 



POETRY; A Magazine of Vtrsi 

find myself wishing for less seriousness, less dogmatism, less 
exactitude in the drawing of lines and definitions ; and for 
more iirbanit>-, more gaiety, more sense of perspective, more 
of that fundamental humor which recognizes that we human 
beings are all motes dancing in shade or sun, and that art 
is merely the push of certain particles toward the golden 
gleam of beauty. Is it not indeed, one of the true functions 
of art, as of religion, to keep man in his place, to rebuke 
his intense and absurd preoccupations with business or power, 
with love or war or glory, by reminding him of the infinite, 
revealing those vast spaces beyond the range of his march- 
ing feet, his reaching hands, his soaring spirit? Only thus, 
through intuition of his littleness, is he made aware of his 
greatness as a necessary motive in the universal scheme, and 
taken out of the dull and narrow range of unimaginative 
existence, H. M. 

■- THIS CONSTANT PREACHING TO THE MOB 

' Time and again the old lie. There is no use talking 
to the ignorant about lies, for they have no criteria. De- 
ceiving the ignorant is by some regarded as evil, but it is 
I the demagogue's business to bolster up his position and to 

show that God's noblest work is the demagogue. There- 
fore we read again for the one-thousand-one-hundred-and- 
elcventh time that poetry is made to entertain. As follows: 
"The beginnings of English poetry . . . made by a rude 
war-faring people for the entertainment of men-at-anns, or 
for men at monks' tables." 
[144) 





This Constant Preaching to tht Moh 



Either such statements are made to cuny favor with other 
people sitting at fat sterile tables, or they are made m an 
ignorance which is charlatanry when it goes out 10 vend 
itself as sacred and impeccable icnawledge. 

"The beginnings — for entertainment" — has the writer of 
this sentence read The Seafarer in Anglo-Saxon? Will 
the author tell us for whose benefit these lines, which alone 
in the works of our forebears are fit to compare with Homer 
— for whose entertainment were they made? They were 
made for no man's entertainment, but because a man believ- 
ing in silence found himself unable to withhold himself from 
speaking. And that more uneven poem. The Wanderer, is 
like to this, a broken man speaking: 

Ne ntieg nctigmod wryde wiihttondan 

ne »e hreo hyge beipe gefreioman: 

for thon domgcorne dtcorigoe oft 

in hrya breoslcofan bindalh faiite. 

"For the doom-eager bindeth fast his blood -be draggled heart 
in his breast" — an apology for speaking at all. and speech 
only pardoned because his captain and all the sea-faring 
men and companions are dead ; some slain of wolves, some 
torn from the clifTs by sea-birds whom they had plundered. 
Such poems are not made for after-dinner speakers, nor 
was the eleventh book of the Odyssey. Still it flatters the 
mob to tell them that their importance is so great that the 
solace of lonely men, and the lordliest of the arts, was cre- 
ated for their amusement. Exra Pound 



[145] 



^ ;. .n-K*-* ^ \>H!NtrrON TRILOGY 

...:..:'! *c v:»:i!s *r I'vrn the dixskaeF: 

;c !:i Miiuic I'M such lui auoiexis 

. , • t!!i> m: iiucrstands. He C2S 

^ . . M.«»r t.if. ■ !c s man enough. 

.*. . 'U. c "lust xcep his man- 

. .-. r-.LvcM \\M ropicaL By 

•i"- :c iiiumcniolc Puii- 

., ^ . . N • • • '>c .ppruaeh to the 

; .;j! N nu aacTCS arc still 

<.«-u:^ r tookcr T. 

. . ••-.•. i*'.c *eopie from 

' * « -v** •. "* .•: r ny'.cid, llli- 

•■ • • . •f » • N-». ;•. vx ^ncht 

•■• ' • ■ •• .•»«*• .» »...i:i %r>iie"*nan s 

T.'i '■■' '• ^ ' »• • ••. * .• ;.it> SI fir "om- 

Z'i" ^" ••■ •••• • •• •. ..I Mitti; .ittr ihc 

'^*"<>: v« • • •■>• ••• • • . . tt,. .,, ..I itiptit"ii ii he 

'"'' I ••'*■• '•• ■••.>. • ,•.....;.•.• ,1 ,. J, I, jj^ ^ T!3X 

♦.J?.? ,••.■• • • « ....... : ... « . . , ; , y., |j . *|M 

' •• M»wit:!r 

VV-«?J. f.j.1. . 

ail A f.. A . ft ' ,s , . . 

• • • 

• i 4« • 



Notes on the Booker ffashinglon Trilogf 

dcvil-fear that haunts the race, though it is written with a 
humorous close. Juhn Brown records the race patriotism, 
with a flare of rebellion, King Solomon the race utopianism, 
with an overgrowth of the tropical. 

Almost any reading negro, whatever his shrewd silence 
during working hours, is bound to remember Uncle Tom't 
Cabin with gratitude, and John Brown as welt. He is bound 
to have an infinite variety al thoughts about them, grave 
and gay. And negro leaders of whatever faction hope for 
the day when their race will be truly redeemed. They look 
forward to it with the same passion that moves the other 
idealists of the world, but with an utterly different imagina- 
tion. 

Their year of jubilee is indeed distant. The King Solomon 
poem looks as far into the future as the Chinese Nightingale 
into the past, and may be considered its direct antithesis in 
many ways. 

I am conscious that Booker Washington might have 
looked upon the mere titles and ostensible themes of these 
pieces with a certain good-natured irony; and I am not 
attempting to commit him posthumously to any of my views 
of his race. He was all for common sense, and friendship 
with good white people. He was for self-help and the 
attaining of the millcnium one plain step at a time. 

The stanza that directly applies to him is the one on 
King Solomon's shepherds, for Booker Washington was cer- 
tainly a shepherd of the sheep. A mere incident of his 
shepherding was the correct art theory of his Tuskcgee 

[H7J 



POETRY: A Magaxine of Vertt 

singers. Standing on that theory I offer this trilogy. Upon 
that theory I have tried to produce something that will 
interest the more sophisicated colored people as art first of 
all. I have left out dialect in the spelling as an irrelevant 
matter: and I have tried to leave out stupidity tn the plot 
as no longer essential in attempting work tropical and 
strictly Afro- American. V. L. 

REVIEWS 



MR. MASTERS NEW BOOK 

Songi and Satirei, by Edgar Lee Masters. Macmillan Co. 

This poet has been likened to Chaucer, and it may be that 
in nothing does the resemblance apply more than in his 
exuberance, Chaucer was no pruner and whittler; if the 
cost of parchment and copyists did not cut down his product 
in the fourteenth century, the multiplicity of books would 
not frighten him to-day. He would pour out his soul as 
freely and carelessly now as then, because of the overflowing 
of life from deep wells within him. And his public would 
have to take or leave what he might choose to give them — 
they could not dictate. 

So Mr. Masters, now that he has found his public, refuses 
to coddle it. If Spoon River was his speech to the jury in 
the great court-room of life, this new book is informal talk- 
ing and story-swapping after the court has adjourned. The 
excited galleries would like to have the speech go on, but 
there is a time for all things: another masterpiece tomorrow 
[148] 




Mr. Masters' New Book 



maybe — meaniiinc let's talk about Helen of Troy, or Saint 
Peter, or the way God makes atoms and worlds, or Jim's 
rather plodding love affair, or my best beloved uncle, or any 
old queerness of this antic-loving planet. And talk he does 
— "very near singing," sometimes; and more entertaioiagly 
and with more variety than any other poet in seven counties 
— I mean countries. 

Thus the new book is all kinds for all men — good, bad 
or indifferent, just as it happens. But if Helen of Troy is 
almost the worst poem which that long-suffering lady has 
ever had to endure, So tee Grew together, and Silence, and 
Simon Sumamed Peter, and The Coded Hat and Ifilliam 
Marion Reedy, are fascinating, intriguing poems of beauty 
and passion ; yes, and also, quite surprisingly, those three 
on legendary subjects — the two Lancelot ballads, which 
throw Tennyson's expurgated version into the discard by 
giving us the real Malory ; and the finely intuitive Saint 
Francis and Lady Clare, which strips bare the impassioned 
soul of a nun, revealing her quaintly mediaeval, ecstatic 
religiosity. 

Here, in short, is a big, all-round, profoundly imaginative 
poet. Not one of fine shades and nice selections, an exact 
student of his own art ; but a real man and a generous lover 
of life, who is kindled to a singing flame by the mysterious 
harmonies and discords of the world. He lights up for us 
not only wide open spaces, but all sorts of odd (ricks and 
dark corners; sometimes with a white fire of truth, and 
agaio, with smoky, earth-smelling, loud- crackling laughter. 

[149] 



POETRY: A Mafat. 



of Vertt 



And he speaks in our idiom. He is modem in our time just 
as Dante was in his, or Moliere in his; like thetn at heart 
a haught}' idealist, he also is bent upon pulling down the 
hallow shells of outworn systems which have thickened and 
darkened around the souls of men, and showing us how to 
build the new more democratic city toward which our 
steps are stumbling. 

The absurdity and divinity of that morsel of dust and 
fire which we call a human being — what modern poet, what 
modern writer, expresses this with such uncanny intimacy 
as Mr. Masters? Was satire ever more searching than in 
A Cached Hat — or, in a certain sense, more loving, as the 
best satire must be? Mr. Bryan's portrait — the majestic 
failure of his career — is painted for alt time; and incidentally 
the facile ideals and weaknesses of the "typical American" 
arc held up for his own sober second thought. And the 
same theme — the divinity and absurdity of man — is treated 
in a mood of serious sympathy in So Wt Grew Together and 
All Life in a Life, and in a mood of exaltation in The Cry, 
The Conversation and The Star. 

There are those, strangely enough, who find in Spoon 
River a "shriveling of life," failing to see the fierce, white- 
hot idealism which vitalizes its bitter knowledge. Perhaps 
they may find it in this new volume. At any rate we may 
set down here for their benefit the book's concluding lines, 
from one of its most loftily beautiful poems, The Star. The 
passage is the prayer of "mad Frederick" : 

Give roe lo undcntind, O Star, 

Your inner lelf, your eternal spirit, 

[150] 



Mr. Mailers' Nfiv Book 

Tliat I may have you anil not image* of you. 

So that I may knnn nhai has diiven me through the world, i 

And may cure my *ou]. 

For I knotr you are Eternal Love, 

And I can never escape you. 

And if I cannot eicape you. 

Then I must serve vou. 

And if I n 



It n 



>t be II 






:ill. 



You have brought me (ram the foreii of pooli 
And the imagei of ilati, 
Here lo the Hill'i top. 
Where now do I go? 
And what iball I do? 



THE RADICALS 



Others: an Anthology of the New Verie, editeil by Alfred 
Krcymborg. Alfred A. Knopf, New York. 
One cannot review this collection without connecting it 
with the magazine Others from which it is taken, so I may 
a« well say that for its editor I have nothing but praise, and 
I bcL'eve that its most radical experiments — the works of 
Mina Loy, Rodker, Sanborn, etc., — should be published. I 
assume that even Miss Monroe, whose editorial ideal evi- 
dently is for poems of more artistic permanence than many 
in this volume arc, will agree with me that every lover of 
art, no matter what his own tastes are, should encourage 
the more experimental work too. Besides we have here 
many things for which we can only be grateful. 

Pound's Shop-girl is lovely; the beginning is as good as 

»mc of the Chinese masterpieces he has recreated for us. In 

Another Man's Wife he has caught a delicate charm in the 

[151] 



POETRY: A M„ta 



.1 y. 



bloom ; it is an cjipression of a rare and pure artistic refiae- 
meni. Arensberg's June and The Swan stand up well be- 
side these. Graceful as [he tilting of a bird is the greater 
part of Pfler Quince, in spite of some slight technical de- 
fects in the construction. Some of Miss Crapsey's Cinquaim 
are lovely. Kreymborg's Convrniion and some of his f'ari- 
alioHS, are with us to stay, no matter what form poetry may 
take in the future. Eliot's Portrait of a iVoman, though 
reminiscent of Henry James, is skilfully done, and haunts 
the reader. I like it better than his Love-song of J. Alfred 
Prufrock, as here the writer is less interested in futuristic 
effects, and is trying to express the drama to the best of his 
ability. Francis Gregg's Quest is somewhat commonplace, 
and Iris is a lifeless imitation of H. D., but Perche h lovely, 
and. like H. D.'s poem about the rose in In the Garden, 
which appeared in Poetry, is a step into a new style. Les 
Ombres de la Mer has this quality in a lesser degree, Horace 
Holley's y'ou possesses it too, 

Mary Aldis' Three Sisters is interesting as a study of 
temperaments, and it has a charm of wistfulness hard to 
define. R. C. Brown, too, is interesting. W. C. Williams 
is not represented by as good work as he has had in Poetrv, 
but his workmanship is almost always careful, and the spirit 
of his poems is always sincere. This remark applies to Carl 
Sandburg as well. I like also Helen Hoyt's unique Coignes 
and Homage: this latter poem has a quality which is hard 
to describe. Perhaps the popular term "dear" comes nearest. 
Mr. Ficke's poem would have been better without the in- 



T 



[J521 




Tkt Radicals 

traduction. He has all of us, with our conventional ideas, for 
an audience, and does not need a special one. But I believe 
Mr. Ficke only feels really free when he has half a dozen 
or more chains around him. 

But there are many things in this collection that are not 
beautiful, even if one takes the word in its most modern 
sense. 

Skipwith Cannell's preface of several pages is of some 
interest, but the poetry that one expects after so long a 
preface is not there. 1 may as well here express the start- 
ling opinion to which many poets will object, that repeating 
[he Nietzsche which one has picked up from Bernard Shaw 
and newspaper gossip is not poetry. There was a real 
Nietzsche, and he has written much better poetry, though in 
prose form, than any of his "interpreters." The influence 
of Gauguin I could not find — unless it is in the spacing. 

Of Rodker's contributions, Twilight and Lunatic seem 
the best, but they lack depth. It is book- impression ism. 
When one compares The Dutch Dolls with that somewhat 
disagreeable but sincere bit of work, W. C. Williams' Ogre, 
for instance, one can see how superficial it is. 

Under the thin or thick veil of obscurity some of these 
poets are tempted toward a more or less delicate charlatanism, 
poor worbnanship, vulgar sntartness, etc. ; then there are 
also the newest cliches, which save the writer real thinking; 
and one can only be grateful that poets do not more often 
and more fully take advantage of thcic opportunities. 

Some of the writers in this volume are over tempted. 

[153] 



K>ETRY: A Maga%ine of Vtrte 

RobcR Alden Sanborn is one of these. At the risk of 
being unfair to him I will take him as an example because 
I believe he is talented enough to be worth stirring up. The 
' lotus "animate, winged for escape," (hough not new, Is 
passable; "To the cupped hand of night" is lovely; but 
"Scooping green and pink stars out of the unknown abysses 
of space" is of the new cliches — it is in the air if you just 
reach out your finger for it, as mudi as any of the older 
ones. "The stem hinting of some old connection, forgotten 
scandal in the taciturn mud" is a dull, forced, and not clearly 
realized piece of writing — insincere, "Close as leaves fallen 
on wet grass" describes the situation there badly ; it is taken 
almost bodily from Pound, and is brought in only for its 



The quality and workmanship in Mr, Bodenheim's poems 
in this collection are much better than in his earlier ones; 
yet even here the poet can not always resist using the most 
puzzling and shocking pigment instead of the simplest and 
most suitable, as — "A filled chest unable to open itself," in a 
poem otherwise vcr>- good. In this manner there is the 
temptation to make a commonplace main idea do, as alt of 
Mina Loy's poems, interesting as they arc as an experiment, 
will prove to anyone who penetrates her color-jargon. I 
think "Evening in which they hang up the crude little 
Japanese-lanterns of their thoughts on the ever-swaying 
strings of their minds," is not any better than the same 
thought expressed more directly. The art-value of rope- 
dancing lies in the dance-rhythm only; in nothing else. 




I 
I 



The Radicals 

Taken as a whole, I think the volume interesting and stim- 
ulating. When one tries to realize clearly all the drudgery, 
toil and self -sacrifice involved in such pioneer editing, one 
must extend to Mr. Kreymborg hearty good wishes for success 
in his venture. Atax MickeUon 



THE BROOKE LETTERS 

Henry James's last gracious service was to introduce 
Rupert Brooke — that being, "young, happy, radiant, extraor- 
dinarily endowed and irresistibly attaching," whose life in 
England and whose death among the Greek Islands have 
lately received such wide celebration. Mr, James first met 
Brooke in that delectable tract, the Cambridge "backs," 
and wondered what so splendid a setting could do with 
"the added grace of such a person;" wondered, too, why 
the youth, pointed out as a poet, should need to be a poet: 
why should he specialize — why be anything but his own 
attractive &elf ? 

Well, Brooke in his Letters from America is not a poet. 
He is a kind, humorous, intelligent young gentleman, some- 
what puzzled in an alien field, trying to mix as far as may 
be, and hoping not to be unduly fastidious and difficult. His 
first encounter is of course with New York. He deals cau- 
tiously and forbcaringly with its superficial aspects — its 
streets by day and by night. He lets off a set piece of his 
own on the town's electric signs, with such aids, mythological 
and philosophical, as are at the finger tips of a young uni- 

[155] 



POETRY: A Afo 



0/ yir 



versity man, and it is only from farthest Ontario that he 
gives his real impression in one word — New York is 
"hellish, " He docs better with Boston than with New York, 
and better with Quebec than with Boston. 

By the same token, he does better with the Canadian 
Rockies than with Eastern Canada, and better with Samoa 
than with the Canadian Rockies. He seems, in one phase, a 
child of nature, impatient with the repellent rawnesses of a 
new "civilization," and ever welcoming the simpler types 
and wider spaces that lie beyond. He treats the older 
Canada with an incisive, cursory disdain : one feels that, in 
noting its crudities and corruptions, he is but registering 
another deferred opinion on things upon our own side of the 
line. 

Niagara, the Saguenay, the mountains around Calgary, 
the Indians, the sea-enwrapped Samoans — such are the things 
that stir his nature and bring the poetical phrases to his pen. 
Better these than the bumptious sophistications of our new 
cities ; but better still than these the ripe, settled time-worn 
ways of his own native village. Brooke, like James himself, 
misses in new lands the "moral interest." Ours is a new 
world indeed; virginal; "a godless place." There are "no 
ghosts of lovers in Canadian lanes." It is possible, at a 
pinch, to "do without gods." But — "one misses the dead." 

Caught between a citizen of Edmonton and one of Cal- 
gary, each boasting the growth of his own town in wealth 
and population, Brooke sends his thoughts back to Grant- 
chester, which at Doomsday Book numbered four hundred 

[156] 




^^" «ouk. b 



The Brooke Lettrrt 
"They 



souls, but has now declined to three hundred and fifty, 
seemed perplexed and angry." 

On the whole, a book not greatly important in itself; 
but welcome indeed as showing certain facets of a rich, 
vivid, attractive nature, and as helping to furnish forth a 
youth who, otherwise, would be none too heavily documented 
for the prized and permanent place he will hold in English 
letters. H. B. F. 

CORRESPONDENCE 
I 
Dear Editor: Looking over the new number of PoETRV 
this morning — when I ought to be at work — I notice that 
you again suggest, as several times before, that college facul- 
ties are not interested in the present-day poetic movements, 
and I feel moved to enter a quiet protest. I will leave Yale 
and Mount Holyokc and others to speak for themselves, but 
here at Wellesley, founded by an enthusiastic lover of poetry, 
the late Henry F. Durant, we have, since those early days 
when we listened to the voices of Longfellow and Matthew 
Arnold, reading their poems on our chapel platform, down 
to this very year, in which seven poets — Mr. Mascfield, Mrs. 
M&rks, Miss Lowell, Mr. Dole, Miss Converse, Mrs. 
Evans and Mr. Lindsay — have read to us, held current poetry 
in honor. 1 have, too, a senior one-hour- a- week course in 
twentieth century poetry, giving the first semester to English 
poets and the second to American. Talcing our English se- 
mester, for example, we have discussed in the classroom 

1157] 



POETRY: A Magazine of Verte 

Meredith, Hardy and Bridges, Kipling, Ncwbolt and Noyes, 
Yeats, A. E. and Fiona McL«od, Masefield and Gibson, 
while the students made studies, embodied in t}'ped papers 
that went the rounds of the class, of the younger men — each 
choosing her own poet — represented in the Georgian antholo- 
gies. Moreover, we take Poetry. 

Katharine Lee Batet 

ir 

Editor of Poetry: A. C. H.'s criticisms in your May 
number are amusing but childish. They ignore the fact (or 
do they juggle with the truth?) that the "I" used by the 
school of poets criticised is a vicarious "1" — a pronoun rep- 
resenting a type and not a person. illice Groff 

[II 

To Sandburg: 

Maybe I am an I-am-it, 
But you and your You-are-it song 
Have craclced my ear so wide and deep 
Tliat the blood of the world Hows in 
Drowning my me- love. 

Sing, 
Sing till the last dam falls. 
And old blood, new blood, owner and all 

Rush along in I-lovc. 

Alfred Krtymborf 
[158] 




PRIZE ANNOUNCEMENT 

Never has Poetry undertaken a task so difficult as this 
awarding of a prize in its one-act play contest. In the first 
place, we have to admit that none of the submitted plays 
unites under a single title our own conditions of poetic 
beauty, actability, and a subject either American or of mod- 
ern significance through "life unlocalized." Among the six 
plays, sifted out of nearly an hundred, which seem to the 
judges most worthy of consideration, the choice must involve 
a compromise in one direction or another. 

Oply one of the six, The Lynching, is a straight treat- 
ment of a modern American theme. Another, The Daugh- 
ter of the Sun, is a play of prehistoric legendary life and 
myth in Arizona or New Mexico. A third, The Garden, 
is a study of temperament, a symbolic presentation of life 
as it appears to the American young girl. 

The other three plays are all exotic. One, The Shadow, 
is placed "somewhere in the East," and the motive is frankly 
Buddhistic, though the judges think they find in it an alle- 
goric treatment of the present international problem — man's 
hesitation between the pacifist and the militarist ideals, 
In the other two, though the scenes are laid in San Fran- 
cisco and Pennsylvania, the characters are chiefly Chinese; 
and it is these two, strangely enough, which, because of 
their poetic or dramatic quality, have seemed to the judges 
the chief claimants for the prize. 

In their final decision the judges find themselves forced 
I159I 




POETRY: J Magatint of Verse 

to choose between a pretty and dramatically competent play 
on a tenderly human subject, and a strange and fantastic 
work of original genius, which, whatever its dramatic value, 
and however diverting or repelling its storj-, has extraordi- 
nary- poetic beauty, and presents symbolically a profound 
truth of our mysterious earthly existence. As to its actability, 
opinions differ. Two or three experienced producers in the 
art theatre movement think that a stage production would 
clarify and intensify its subtle poetic significance and beauty; 
but most of the judges doubt if it would "get across" to 
more than a fraction of the audience. They feel, however, 
that it is an outreaching experiment: that, whether it is 
wholly achieved or not, the fire and light in it may blaze 
new trails; that in this formative moment of our poetic 
drama, when the future looks large before us and nobody 
can tell what it will bring forth, the original creative im- 
pulse should be encouraged. Poetrv has stood from the 
beginning for the original creative impulse, for the outreach- 
ing experiment. Its course is not safe and sane, perh^is, 
but it must continue in this spirit — it must place its stake 
on human genius, and follow with a certain loyalty the 
waj-ward torch of beauty, even though ignorant where it will 
lead. 

It is in this spirit that the judges award the prize of one 
hundred dollars, ofTered by an anonymous donor for 8 one- 
act poetic play, to 

MB. WALLACE STEVENS 

for Three Travellers fVaick a Sunrise. 
[160] 



^^^Thc ! 






The following plays receive honorable mention: 
TAf Sweetmeat Game, by Ruth Comfort Mitchell. 
The Daughter of the Sun, by Marian Keep Patton. 
The Garden, by Florence Kiper Frank. 
The Shadow, by Perry B. Corneau. 
The Lynching, by Miriam Allen dc Ford. 

The prize-winning play will be primed in either die July 
or the August number of Poetry. 

One of the judges dissents from the above award. 



NOTES 

Mr. Vichel Lindiiy, of Sprinsfitld. tllinoii, ti ntll knonn to 
rctdcri of PoETRV, nhich lilt autumn aviicded lo him ihc Helen 
Htire L»vin»on priie for The Chintsi Nightingalt. Mr. Undiay'i 
t«ro mirtt recent volumei ire proae — The Atl of the Moving Picture 
and AJvtatarit IVhtle Frrathing the Gospel of Beauty (Mac- 
millan Co.). 

Mary Eleinor Roberts (Mrt. John R.), of Philadelphia, ii the 
iultiar of Clalh of Friixe (Lippincott, 1911)- 

None of ihe other contributors haa jiubljjhid ■ volume ai yet. 
Mill Clara Shinafelt, of Canton, Ohio, was repreiented in tke 
intagist number of the London EgoitI, as well as other numbers, 
and *he has appeared in nther progressive magazines. Mr. H. 
Thorapson Rich, of Rutherford, New Jersey, was recently graduated 
from Dartmouth and has published verse in one or mo magazine*. 
Miss Rosalind Mason is a young Chicago poet, a graduate of 
Bryn Mawr. 

Mr. Kleofaa Jurgelionis is the editor of a Lithuanian paper 
printed in Chicago. List year he published a Iratitlatioo of 
Macbeth into Lithuanian vtne. 

Our readers vrill welcome two posthumous poems by the late 
Midiion Cawein. 



[16IJ 




BOOKS RECEIVED 

DUCtHAL veme: 

In Ike Tovim: a Boo* 0/ handon Ftrtit, by DougUa Goldring. Sel- 
wyn and Blount. London. 

On the Road: a Book of Travel Sangi, by Douglia Goldring. Sel- 
wyn k Blount. 

Poemt and Ptayi, by Percy Mackayc. 1 voli. Macmillan Co. 

The Faotiam, by Edtvin Alfred Watrous. Gorham Press. 

The Fledging Bard and the Poetry Socitly, by George Reginald 
Marg«»on. Badger. 

Tie Road to Everywhere, by Glenn Ward Dretbach. Gorharo 
Press. 

Gobtlns and Pagodas, by John Gould FIclcber. Houghton Mif- 
flin Co. 

A Song of Ihe Guns, by Gilbert Frankau. Houghton MifRin Co. 

RoaJ$, by Grace Fallow Norton. Houghton Mifflin Co. 

The Victory, by Charles Keeler. Laurence J. Gorarae. 



/, by Hir 



Seven Sonnet) and Ode to the Merry Mon 

worth. Privately ptinled. 
Winlergreen, by Marvin Manim Sberrtck, Badger. 
Selected Poems, by Aaron Schaffer. Poel-lort Co, 
Lyrics of War and Peace, by Wm. Dudley Foulke. Bobbs-Mer- 

rill Co. 
Ml the Edge of the World, by Caroline Stern. Gorham Presi. 
Poems, by Najah E. Woodward. Poei-lore Co. 
Some Imagist Poets, I9t6. Houghton Mifflin Co. 

Madonna Dianora, by Hugo Von Hoflfmannsthal. Trintlaied from 
the German by Harriet Belty Boas. Ricbaid C. Badger. 

The Pageant of Yankton, by Joseph Mills Hanson. Garden Ter- 
race Theatre, Yankton, S. Dakota. 

Reveries over Childhood and Yoafh, by William Butler Yeal». 

Macmillan Co. 
Makar's Dream and Other Stories, by Vladimir Koroleoko. TV«n»- 

tated from the Russian, nith an introduajoa, by Marian Fell, 

Dufficid k Co. 



[1621 



VOL. vm 



ieErizePlayinthisNumber 

NO. IV 

etry 



'le of Verse 

Etuceei ijy ilarrietMomoe 

JULY 1916 

e Tnivelen Watch i Sitnris«: A Play b One Act 




W:.l 



St^. 



I 163 



I Memory of Bryan Lathrop E^-j 

icrifice Fr- 181 

( WUd Bird - . . . G: . 182 
:i HJs Houfte>-The Poet's Part , Liiv A L^ng 183 

i in the Tren Lulu W. Knight 184 

nlng .... peter Nordeo IBS 

tain Fair Lady LvriKiu Brvimn IS5 

ICntloquy in Sleep '186 

pcniH iS7 

„ M,.„.r_r.,..„rh Hm Be^i- .-- .. .;-, 

. 191 



Do It— The Rejtctioa Slip— Bubfei Darin 

^i..l thr Ncv, Raalltr 



Mtk Letter*— A: 



, 195 
. 204 

Zll 

213 
217 



SINGLE miUBKBS, VS C 




ottxy 



A n>99asiae of Venc 



Vol. VIII 
No. IV 



JULY, 1916 



THREE TRAVELERS WATCH A SUNRISE.* 



^^B nS^BBN^'^^ characters are three Chintsf, two negroes 

^^^ lffia|Cv!v The scene represents a forest of heavy trees 
I hilltop in eastern Pennsylvania. To the 
I right is a road, obscured by bushes. It is about 

I four o'clock of a morning in August, at the present time. 

^^L When the curtain rises, the stage is dark. The limb of a 

^^H trte creaks. A negro carrying a lantern passes along the 

^^f nad. The sound is repealed. The negro comes through 

the bushes, raises his lantern and looks through the trees. 

Discerning a dark object among the branches, he shrinks 

back, crosses stage, and goes out through the wood to the left. 

A second negro comes through the bushes to the right. 

Ht carries two large baskets, which he places on the ground 

just inside of the bushes. Enter three Chinese, one of whom 



tarries a lantern. They pause on the road. 

*CopTii|hl, t91S, by WalUce Stemu: diiraatic 




rithu (tietred. 



POETRY: A Magazine of Verse 

Second Chinese. All you need. 
To find poetry, 
Is to look for it wi^ a lantern. [The Chinese laugh,"] 

Third Chinese. I could find it without, 
On an August night, 
If I saw no more 
Than the dew on the bams. 

[ The Second Negro makes a sound to attract their atten- 
tion. The three Chinese come through the bushes. The 
first is short, fat, quizzical, and of middle age. The second 
is of middle height, thin and turning gray; a man of sense 
and sympathy. The third is a young man, intent, detached. 
They wear European clothes."] 

Second Chinese. [Glancing at the baskets.] 
Dew is water to see. 
Not water to drink: 
We have forgotten water to drink. 
Yet I am content 
Just to see sunrise again. 
I have not seen it 
Since the day we left Pekin. 
It filled my doorway, 
Like whispering women. 

First Chinese. And I have never seen it. 
If we have no water. 
Do find a melon for me 
In the baskets. 

[164] 



Three Travelers Ifalck a Sunrise 



[The Second Negro, who kai been opening the baskets, 
hands the First Chinese a melon.] 

First Chinese. Is there no spring? 

[The negro lakes a water bottle of red porcelain from 
one of the baskets and places it near the Third Chinese.'] 

Second Chinese. [To Third Chinese,] Your porcelain 
water bottle. 

[One of the battels contains costumes of silt, red, blue 
and green. During the following speeches, the Chinese put 
on these costumes, with the assistance of the negro, and seat 
themselves on the ground.] 

Third Chinese. This fetches its own water. 

[ Takes the battle and places il on the ground in the center 
of the stage.] 

I drink from it, dry as it is, 
As you from maxims, [To Second Chinese.] 
Or you from melons. [To First Chinese.] 

First Chinese. Not as I, from melons. 
Be sure of chat. 

Second Chinese. Well, it is true of maxims. 

[He finds a book in the pocket of his costume, and reads 
from it.] 

"The court had known poverty and wretchedness; hu- 
manity had invaded its seclusion, with its suffering 
and Its pity." 

[The limb of the tree creaks.] 
Yes: it is true of maxims, 
Just as it is true of poets, 

[165] 



POETRY: A Magazine of Verse 

Or wise men, or nobles, 
Or jade. 

First Chinese. Drink from wise men? From jade? 
Is there no spring? 

[Turning to the negro, who has taken a jug from one of 
the baskets.'] 
Fill it and return. 

[The negro removes a large candle from one of the 
baskets and hands it to the First Chinese; then takes the 
jug and the lantern and enters the trees to the left. The 
First Chinese lights the candle and places it on the ground 
near the water bottle.] 

Third Chinese. There is a seclusion of porcelain 
That humanity never invades. 

First Chinese. [With sarcasm.] Porcelain! 

Third Chinese. It is like the seclusion of sunrise, 
Before it shines on any house. 

First Chinese. Pooh! 

Second Chinese. This candle is the sun ; 
This bottle is earth : 
It is an illustration 
Used by generations of hermits. 
The point of difference from reality 
Is this: 

That, in this illustration. 
The earth remains of one color — 
It remains red. 
It remains what it is. 

[166] 



Three Travelers Watch a Sunrise 

But when the sun shines on the earth, 

In reality 

It does not shine on a thing that remains 

What it was yesterday. 

The sun rises 

On whatever the earth happens to be. 

Third Chinese. And there are indeterminate moments 
Before it rises, 

Like this, [With a backward gesture.^ 
Before one can tell 
What the bottle is going to be — 
Porcelain, Venetian glass, 
Egyptian ... 
Well, there are moments 
When the candle, sputtering up, 

Finds itself in seclusion, [He raises the candle in the air.] 
And shines, perhaps, for the beauty of shining. 
That is the seclusion of sunrise 
Before it shines on any house. [Replacing the candle,] 

First Chinese. [Wagging his head,] As abstract as 
porcelain. 

Second Chinese, Such seclusion knows beauty 
As the court knew it 
The court woke 
In its windless pavilions, 
And gazed on chosen mornings. 
As it gazed 
On chosen porcelain. 

[167] 



POETRY: A Magazine of Verse 

What the court saw was always of the same color, 

And well shaped, 

And seen in a clear li^t. [He points to the candle."] 

-It never woke to see. 

And never knew. 

The flawed jars, 

The weak colors. 

The contorted glass. 

It never knew 

The poor li^ts. [He opens his book significantly.'] 

When the court knew beauty only, 

And in seclusion, 

It had neither love nor wisdom. 

These came throu^ poverty 

And wretchedness, 

Through suffering and pity. [He pauses.] 

It is the invasiod of humanity 

That counts. 

[The limb of the tree creaks. The First Chinese turns, 
for a moment, in the direction of the sound.] 

First Chinese. [Thoughtfully.] The li^t of the most 
tranquil candle 
Would shudder on a bloody salver. 

Second Chinese. [With a gesture of disregard.] It is the 
invasion 
That counts. 

If it be supposed that we are three figures 
Painted on porcelain 

[168] 



Three Travelers fVatch a Sunrise 

As we sit here, 

That we are painted on this very bottle. 

The hermit of the place, 

Holding this candle to us, 

Would wonder; 

But if it be supposed 

That we are painted as warriors, 

The candle would tremble in his hands; 

Or if it be supposed, for example. 

That we are painted as three dead men. 

He could not see the steadiest li^t. 

For sorrow. 

It would be true 

If an emperor himself 

Held the candle. 

He would forget the porcelain 

For the figures painted on it 

Third Chinese. [Shrugging his shoulders."] Let the candle 
shine for the beauty of shining. 
I dislike the invasion 
And long for the windless pavilions. 
And yet it may be true 
That nothing is beautiful 
Except with reference to ourselves. 
Nor ugly. 

Nor hi^, [Pointing to the sky.] 
Nor low. [Pointing to the candle.] 
No : not even sunrise. 

[169] 



POETRY: A Magazinw 0/ Vtrit 

Can you play of this [Mockingly lo First Chinaf.} 
For us? [He standi up.] 

First Chinrse. [Hesitatingly.'] 1 have a song 
Called Mistress and Maid. 
It is of no interest to hermits 
Or emperors, 
Yet it has a bearing; 
For if we affect sunrise, 
We affect all things. 

Third Chinese. It is a pity it is of women. 
Sing it. 

[fie lakes an instrument from one of the baskets and 
hands it to the First Chinese, v.'ha sings the following sang, 
accompanying himself, somewhat tunelessly, on Ike instru- 
ment. The Third Chinese lakes various things out of the 
basket for lea. He arranget fruit. The First Chinese 
watches him while he plays. The Second Chinese gazes at 
the ground. The sky shows the first signs of morning.'] 

First Chinese. The mistress says, in a harsh voice, 
"He will be thinking in strange countries 
Of the white stones near my door, 
And I — I am tired of him." 
She says sharply, to her maid, 
"Sing to yourself no more." 

Then the maid says, to herself, 

"He will be thinking in strange countries 
Of the white stones near her door; 

[170] 



Three Traveltrs H'aick a Sunrae 



But it is me he will sec 
At the window, as before. 

"He will be thinking in strange countries 
Of the green gown I wore. 
He was saying good-by to her," 
The maid drops her eyes and says to her 
"1 shall sing to myself no more." 

Third Chinese. That affects the white stones, 
To be sure. [They laugh.'] 

First Chinese. And it affects the green gown. 
\nd Chinese. Here comes our black man. 

[ The Second Negro returns, somewhat agitated, tvith 
water hut tiithoul his lantern. He hands the jug to the 
Third Chinese. The First Chinese from time to time strikes 
the instrument. The Third Chinese, who faces the left. 
peers in the direction from which the negro has come.^ 

Third Chinese. You have left your lantern behind you. 
It shines, among the trees. 
Like evening Venus in a cloud-top. 

[The Second Negro grins but mates no explanation, lie 
seats himself behind the Chinese to the right.] 

First Chinese. Or like a ripe strawberry 
Among its leaves. [They laugh.] 
I heard tonight 
That they are searching the hill 



For a 



Italia 



He disappeared with his neighbor's daughter. 
[171] 



POETRY: A Magazine of Verse 

Second Chinese. [Confidingly.'] I am sure you heard 
The first eloping footfall, 
And the drum 
Of pursuing; feet. 

First Chinese. [Amusedly."] It was not an elopement. 
The young gentleman was seen 
To dimb the hill, 
In the manner of a tragedian 
Who sweats. 

Such things happen in the evening. 
He was 
Un miserable. 

Second Chinese. Reach the lady quickly. 

[The First Chinese strikes the instrument twice as a pre- 
lude to his narrative.] 

First Chinese. There are as many points of view 
From which to regard her 
As there are sides to a round bottle. [Pointing to the water 

bottle.] 
She was represented to me 
As beautifuL 

[They laugh. The First Chinese strikes the instrument, 
and looks at the Third Chinese, who yawns.] 

First Chinese. [Reciting.] She was as beautiful as a 
porcelain water bottle. 

[He strikes the instrument in an insinuating manner.] 

First Chinese. She was represented to me 
As young. 

[172] 



Thret Travelers ffatck a SuHrite 

Therefore my song should go 
Of the color of blood. 

[He strikes the inslrumenl. The limb of the tree creaks. 
The First Chinese notices it and puts his hand on the kitee 
of the Second Chinese, mho is seated between him and the 
Third Chinese, ta call attention to the sound. They are all 
sealed so thai they do not face the spot from which the 
sound conies. A dark object, hanging to the limb of the 
tree, becomes a dim lilkouelle. The sky grows constantly 
brighter. No color Is to be seen' until the end of the play."] 

Second Chinese. [To First Chinese.] It is only a tree 
Creaking in the night wind. 

Third Chinese. [Shrugging his shoulders.~\ There would 
be no creaking 
In the windless pavilions. 

First Chinese. [Resuming.'\ So far the lady of the present 
ballad 
Would have been studied 
By the hermit and his candle 
With much philosophy; 
And possibly the emperor would have cried, 
"More light!" 
But it is a way with ballads 
That the more pleasing they are 
The worse end they come to ; 
For here it was also represented 
That the lady was poor — 
The hermit's candle would have thrown 

[173] 



POETRY: A Magazine of Verse 

Alanning shadows, 

And the emperor would have held 

The porcelain in one hand . . . 

She was represented as clinging 

To that sweaty tragedian, 

And weeping up the hilL 

Second Chinese. [With a grimace. "] It does not sound 
like an elopement. 

First Chinese. It is a doleful ballad, 
Fit for keyholes. 

Third Chinese. Shall we hear more? 

Second Chinese. Why not? 

Third Chinese. We came for isolation. 
To rest in sunrise. 

Second Chinese. [Raising his book slightly.'] But this 
will be a part of sunrise, 
And can you tell how it will end ? — 
Venetian, 
Egyptian, 
Contorted glass . . . 

[He turns toward the light in the sky to the right, dark- 
ening the candle with his hands."] 

In the meantime, the candle shines, [Indicating the sunrise,] 
As you say, [To the Third Chinese.] 
For the beauty of shining. 

First Chinese. [Sympathetically.] Ohl it will end badly. 
The lady's father 
Came clapping behind them 

[174] 




I 



Three Traveleri ffalch a Sunrise 

To the foot of the hill. 

He came crying, 

"Anna, Anna, Anna!" [Imilating.] 

He was aJone without her. 

Just as the young gentleman 

Was alone without her: 

Three beggars, you sec. 

Begging for one another. 

[ The First Negro, carrying two lanterns, approaches cau- 
tiously through the trees. At the sight of him. the Second 
Negro, sealed near the Chinese, jumps to his feet. The 
Chinese gel up in alarm. The Second Negro goes around 
the Chinese toward ike First Negro. All see the body of a 
man hanging to the limb of the tree. They gather together, 
keeping their eyes fixed on it. The First Negro comet out 
of the trees and places the lanterns on the ground. He loots 
at the group and then at the body.l 

First Chinese. [Movtd.'\ The young gentleman of the 
ballad. 

Third Chinese. ISlou-ly, approaching the body.] And 
the cad of the ballad. 
Take away the bushes, 

[The negroes commence to pull away the bushes.] 

Second Chinese. Death, the hennit, 
Needs no candle 
In his hennitagc. 

[The Second Chintse snuffs out the candle. The First 
Chinese puts out the lanterns. As the hushes are pulled 

[175J 



POETRY: J ifopo 



./ y. 



away, the figure of a girl, sitting half stupefied under the 
tree, iuddenly becomes apparent to the Second Chinese and 
then lo the Third Chinese. They step back. The negroes 
move 10 the left, ffhen the First Chinese sees the girl, 
the instrument slips from his hands and falls notsU]/ to the 
ground. The girl sliri.] 

Second Chinese. [To the girl.] Is that you, Anna? 

[ The girl starts. She raises her head, looks around slowly, 
leapt to her feet and screams.] 

Second Chinese. [Gently.] Is that you, Anna? 

\_She turns quietly toward the body, looks at It fixedly 
and tatters up the stage.] 

Anna. {Bitterly.] Go. 
Tell my father: 
He is dead. 

[ The Second and Third Chinese support her. The First 
Negro whispers to the First Chinese, then lakes the lanterns 
and goes through the opening to the road, where he dis- 
appears in the direction of the valley.] 

First Chinese. [To Second Negro.] Bring us (resh 
water 
From the spring. 

[ The Second Negro takes the juff and enters the trees lo 
ike left. The girl comes gradually to herself. She lookt 
at the Chinese and at the sky. She turns her back toward 
the body, shuddering, and does not look at it again.] 

Anna. It will soon be sunrise. 

Second Chinese. One candle replaces 



[I76J 



Three Travelers iValch a Sunrise 



Another. 

[ The First Chinese walks toward ike bushes to the right. 
He stands by the roadside, as if to attract the attention of 
anyone passing. 'y 

Anna. [Simply.] When he was in his fields, 
1 worked in ours — 
Wore purple to sec: 
And when 1 was in his garden 
I wore gald ear-rings. 
Last evening I met him on the road. 
He asked me to walk with him 
To the top of the hill. 
I felt the evil, 
But he wanted nothing. 
He hanged himself in front of me, 

[She looks for support. The Second and Third Chinese 
help her toward the road. At the roadside, the First Chinese 
takfs the place of the Third Chinese. The girl and the two 
Chinese go through the bushes and disappear down the road. 
The stage is empty except for the Third Chinese. He walks 
slowly across the stage, pushing the instrument out of his way 
with his foot. It reverberates. He looks al the water 
bottle.] 

Third Chinese. Of the color of blood . . . 
Seclusion of porcelain . . . 
Seclusion of sunrise . . . 

[He picks up the water bottle.^ 
The candle of the sun 

[177] 



POETRY: A Magazine of Verse 

Will shine soon 

On this hermit earth. [Indicating the bottle,'] 

It will shine soon 

Upon the trees, 

And find a new thing [Indicating the body.] 

Painted on this porcelain, [Indicating the trees.] 

But not on this. [Indicating the bottle.] 

[He places the bottle on the ground. A narrow cloud 
over the valley becomes red. He turns toward it, then walks 
to the right. He findi the book of the Second Chinese lying 
on the ground, picks it up and turns over the leaves.] 
Red is not only 
The color of blood. 
Or [Indicating the body.] 
Of a man's eyes, 
Or [Pointedly.] 
Of a girl's. 

And as the red of the sun 
Is one thing to me 
And one thing to another. 
So it is the green of one tree [Indicating.] 
And the green of another, 
Which without it would all be black. 
Sunrise is multiplied. 
Like the earth on which it shines, 
By the eyes that open on it. 
Even dead eyes, 
As red is multiplied by the leaves of trees. 

[178] 



Three Travelers Watch a Sunrise 



[Toward the end of this speech, the Second Negro comes 
from the trees to the left, without being seen. The Third 
Chinese, whose back is turned toward the negro, walks 
through the bushes to the right and disappears on the road. 
The negro looks around at the objects on the stage. He 
sees the instrument, seats himself before it and strikes it 
several times, listening to the sound. One or two birds 
twitter. A voice, urging a horse, is heard at a distance. 
There is the crack of^ a whip. The negro stands up, walks 
to the right and remains at the side of the road. The curtain^ 
falls slowly.} I 

Stevens \ 



Wallace 



[179] 



POETRY: A MagaKtne 0/ Vertt 

IN MEMORY OF BRYAN LATHROP 
Who bequeathed to Chicago a School of Music. 

So in Picria, from the wedded bliss 
Of Time and Memory, the Muses caaic 
To be the means of rich oblivion, 
And rest from cares. And when the Thunderer 
Took heaven, then the Titans warred on him 
For pity of mankind. But the great law, 
Which is the law of music, not of bread, 
Set Atlas for a pillar, manacled 
His brother to the rocks in Scythia, 
And under Aetna fixed the furious Typhon. 
So should thought rule, not force. And Amphion, 
Pursuing justice, entered Thebes and slew 
His mother's spouse; but when he would make sure 
And fortify the city, then he took 
The lyre that Hermes gave, and played, and watched 
The stones move and assemble, till a wall 
Engirded Thebes and kept the citadel 
Beyond the reach of arrows and of fire. 
What other power but harmony can build 
A city, and what gift so magical 
As that by which a city lifts its walls? 
So men, in years to come, shall feel the power 
Of this man moving through the high-ranged thought 
Which plans for beauty, builds for larger life, 
The stones shall rise in lowers to answer him. 

Edgar Let Masten 
[180] 



SACRIFICE 

Love sufieretti all things. 
And we, 

Our of the travail and pain of our striving, 
Bring unto Thee the perfect prayer : 
For the lips of no man utter love, 
Suffering even for love's sake. 

For us no splendid apparel of pageantry — 
Burnished breast-plates, scarlet banners, and trumpets 
Sounding exultantly. 

But the mean things of the earth Thou has chosen, 
Decked them with suffering; 
Made them beautiful with the passion for rightness, 
Strong with the pride of love. 



Yea, though our praise of Thee slayeth us, 
Yet love shall exalt us beside Thee triumphant, 
Dying that these live ; 

And the earth again be beautiful with orchards, 
Yellow with wheatfields; 

And the lips of others praise Thee, though our lips 
Be stopped with earth, and songless. 
Yet wc shall have brought Thee their praises 
Brought unto Thee the perfect prayer: 
For the lips of no man utter love. 
Suffering even for love's sate. 

[1811 



POETRY: A Magazine of Verse 



O God of sonowsy 
Who0e feet come softly through die dews, 
Stoop Thou unto us, 
For we die so Thou Uvest, 
Our hearts the cups of Thy vintage : 
And die lips of no man utter love, 
Suffering even for love's sake. 

ig022: Private Frederic Manning, 3rd R. S. L. I. 





^(P^ 



THE WILD BIRD 

Like silence of a starlit sky, 
Like wild birds rising into ni^t, 
Such was her dying, such her flight 
Into eternity. 

But I, who dwell with memory, 
Dream in my grief that she may soar 
Too hig^, and needing love no more 
Come nevermore to me. 

Gretchen Warren 



[1821 



HE BUILDETH HIS HOUSE 

He hewed him the gray cold rock 

To make the foundations under. 
The walls and the towers should lock 

Past the power of the earth to sunder, 
Then, masking the bastions' frown. 

Art came, embroidered and gilded 
That beauty and joy might crown 

The palace which power had builded. 

God siEhcd : "Why huild so tall 
Thy prison vjallf" 



THE POET'S PART 



It is a little world where poets dwell — 
A little, hidden world; and few there be 
Who know its sign or language, or can tell 
Whence come the visions that the poets sec. 
The great world beats about it heedlessly. 
With things to win, to own, to buy, to sell, 
With myriad cares that leave no mortal free, 
With hopes that spur and bafflements that quelL 

Yet ever docs the great world in its might 
Swing onward through the darkness by the light 

[183) 



POETRY: A Magaxint of Verse 

Caught up by poet hand from poet hand ; 
And if but once should sink that flaming brand. 
Why, then would come at last the endless nig^t. 
To hide the ruin of what God had planned. 

LUy A. Long 



THE WIND IN THE TREES 

The wind goes whispering 

The leaves among; 
It has a silken, 

A siren tongue. 

The leaves all listen 

Quivering there; 
A thousand kisses 

Caress the air. 

So stirs my heart 

When he goes by : 
Wind is a breath. 

Love is a si^. 



Lulu W. Knight 



[184] 



GOOD MORNING 

Why, there's the morning and get-up^'clockl 
The dream-dewed freshness and the keen delight — 
Do you remember? There — ^those ashes were 
Our fire last night; the sun is laughing at them. 
Look in the valley where we passed before-^ 
You see — ^that little winding of the road ? 
The selfsame, big, important yesterday 
That seemed so steep and threatening a hilll 
G>me, let us bathe and break the fast and start 1 / 

Peter Norden / 



TO A CERTAIN FAIR LADY 

Your heart is like a poplar tree, 
Full of sunlit greenery, 
A thin lace pattern on the sky. 
That trembles when the winds go by. 

And every zephyr, every day. 
That comes adventuring that way. 
Feels it as tremulously waken, 
As if it never had been shaken. 

Lyman Bryson 



[1851 



POETRY: A Magazine of Verse 

A COLLOQUY IN SLEEP 

Did ever aught make love to you as I ? 

Ah, nol 

Oh, yes — ^the mirror and the sea; 
The sea communes with you as silently. 
The mirror and I hold your beauties hi^ — 
We love you as our queen and never lie. 

You scarcely know my voice — how can I be 
Your queen? You must give over seeing me. 

Raiment and food and drink would you deny? 
You have the worship of mine eyes, and rare 
Devotion such as none may mar or break: 
What more? 

Your very silence is unfair — 
Nor will you let me speak when I'm awake! 

You speak to me in music everywhere, 
Through all sweet music that the masters make. 

John Regnault Ellyson 



[186] 



POEMS 



THB FLBDOUNO 




^"^ 



The fire is nearly out, 
The lamp is nearly out. 
The room is untidy after the long day. 
I am here, unhappy. 
Longing to leave the hearth. 
Longing to escape from the home. 
The others are asleep. 
But I am here, unhappy. 
The fire is nearly out. 
The lamp is nearly out. 

IMPRESSION 

The orchards are white again . . . 
There was one I knew 
Whose body was white as they: fairer. 

Alas I that we drifted apart 

Faster than pear-petals fall to the ground 1 

8TUDT 

Oh carrot cat, slinking over the snow, 
Your skin is blue, where the bitter wind ruffles 3rour fur. 
Can you not find one shivering sparrow in all this white 
world? 

[187] 



POETRY: A Magazine of Verse 

DOMisnc 

Somcdmes, 
Having read 
By the fireside 
Through a long evening, 
I look up. 
The old people 
Apathetically 
Are sitting, 
The dim eyes gazing 
In the past 
That seems so good. 
And then pity 
Dews all my sig^t. 
For old age 
Is the guerdon, 
The only laurels. 
Of their life. 
And mine, uncrowned. 
So far away, 
I cannot cry 

"Haar 

DOUBLE 

Through the day, meekly, 
I am my mother's child. 
Throu^ the nig^t riotously 
I ride great horses. 

[188] 



Double 



In ranks we gallop, gallop, 
Thundering on 
Through the nig^t 
With the wind. 

But in the pale day I sit, quiet. 

TOWN-MOUSE 

These things for today: 
The threat of rain. 
And great hasting clouds; 
Wet soil's scent; 
Fine cobwebs on the heather; 
Keen airl 

Even a park of green lawns, 
Bare boughs and brown sparrows! 
Oh, for no roof overhead 
And full lungs 1 

These things for today. 

BNOUGH HAS BBBN SAID OF SUNSET 



Light — imperceptible as 
One thin veil drawn across blackness : 
Is it dawn? . . . 

[189] 



POETRY: A Magazine of Verse 

» 

G)mes the twitter-whistle of sleepy birds 

Crescendo • • • 

Now bright grayness creeping 

Drowns the dark; and waves of sea-wind 

Rock the thin leaves • • • 

A door bangs; sharp barks from dogs released, scampering. 

After some silence, footsteps. 

And the rising bustle of people 

Roused by the day-break. 

II 

Mysterious; threatening: 
Dawn over housetops silhouetted 
Like crenelated battlements 
Against light of a stage scene. 

IMPRESSION 

At night 
Neither joy, ambition, love nor want 
In my heart. 
But the leaves called 
And the earth called. 
And there was only waiting 
Against the coming of rain, 
And the whipping of hair 
About my head. 

Iris Barry I 

[190] ' 



POEMS BY CHILDREN 




THE PURPLE GRAY 

8tmr like a little candle, 

Moon like a silver tickle 
Which hat lott its handle, ^ \ 

Glowt that downward trickle, 
Cloudt that are pinkened by the glimmer of the faintly-blinking tun ; 

Shadowt acrott the road, 

Scurriet in the buthet — 
Made perhapt by a toad 

Or a ttone one puthet. 
Lamp-light faintly thining through the twitching vinet; 

After tuntet glowt 

In the purple gray — 
Gray that no one knowt. 
Parting of the day: 
That't when grayith, trickling, drowiy things are dreamed. 

Arvia MacKaye 

SONGS 



Roty plum-tree, think of me 

When Spring comet down the world. 

II 

There't dozent full of dandeliont 

Down in the field: 

Little gold platet, 

Little gold dithet in the grata. 

I cannot count them, 

But the fairiet know every one. 

Ill 

Oh wrinkling ttar, wrinkling up to wite. 
When you go to tleep do you thut your eyet ? 

[191] 



POETRY: if Magazine of Verse 



IV 

The red moon comet out in the night: 

When I'm asleep, the moon comei pattering up 

Into the trees. 

Then I peep out my window 

To watch the moon go by. 



Sparkle up, little tired flower. 
Leaning in the grass! 
Did you find the rain of night 
Too heavy to hold? 

VI 

Blossoms in the growing tree, 
Why don't you speak to me? 
I want to grow like you — 
Smiling — smiling. 

VII 

The garden is full of flowers. 
All dancing round and round. 

John-flowers, 

Mary-flowers, 

Pollv-flowers, 

Cauii-flowers — 
They dance round and round. 
And they bow down and down 
To a black-eyed daisy. 

VIII 

I will sing you a song, 

Sweets-of-m^-heart, 

With love m it — 

(How I love you I) — 

And a rose to swinf; in the wind. 

The wind that swings roses. 

Hilda Conkling (four years old) 

[192] 



Summertime 
SUMMERTIME 



Babiet are running all around 

In the fields, 

Getting a wazful of honcr. 

The honey was made of blue flowers, 

But the babies had pink in their wings. 

II 

Rosebushes on a happy day, 
Rosebushes on a happy day. 
Are you all calling your roses. 
On a happy day? 

Ill 

Oh, the apple-blossoms will be apples, some day. 

And cherries will be ripe first of Mardi or first of May. 



IV 



Gay as the flowers, 
Nice as the night, 
I for one 
Am in delight 



Clover tops are conning. 

Cows will soon arise. 

The sun comes up 

And the stars go by. 

Green grasses are growing 

Your trees are blooming with apples: 

And flowers ^row right near the water 

To get a drmk today. 

VI 

The violin makes brown music, 
Brown like bees and honey. 



[193] 



POETRY: A Magazine of Verse 



Gold like tlie Mm. 
Oh, mf Tiolin! 



vn 



The daisies are shining in die sun. 

March till yon come to die creek 

The creek will show yoo the way to die 

March, march, march I 

The little creek mns by all day 

Singing, "River, river!" — 

And never stops to i>lay. 

It jost keeps going night and day. 

March! 

vin 

cherry tree, 

Why don't you give me some cherries? 

1 love to see you bow them down 
On the grass. 

Cherries, red in your cheeks. 

Did you come out of the white blossoms? 

DC 

I saw the clovers flow through the field 

Like a spread of cloud, 

A wing of pink cloud. 

Clovers, are you playing sunset? 



I think of you, Mr. Mapletree, 

And I know you have loads of pleasure, 

For you stand so sweet. 

Now this is my farewell song. 

Elsa Conkling {five years old) 



[194] 



« • 





EDITORIAL COMMENT 

HOW NOT TO DO rr 

E have often discussed in these pages the ques- 
tion of prizes, arguing in favor of them in the 
art of poetry as in the other arts. The editors 
of Poetry believe that prizes, properly en- 
dowed and awarded, conduce to the advance- 
ment of the art, and increase a little its very small financial 
returns. But we would not be understood as approving the 
method adopted by the Poetry Society of America for the 
impending award of two prizes of one hundred and twenty- 
five dollars each, the first ever placed, by a generous and well- 
intentioned donor, at the disposal of the Society, 

The prizes arc to be awarded by popular vote of members 
and others in the following fashion : 

During the past season the society has held, at the Na- 
tional Arts Club, New York, five monthly meetings open 
to members of the Poetry Society and their guests; meetings 
attended chiefly, of course, by the local members, with an 
unlimited number of guests. At each of these meetings from 
ten to twenty poems were read without the disclosure of 
their authorship, after which all "those present," both mem- 
bers and guests, were asked to vote for their favorites. As 
the second stage in the award, unsigned copies of the ten 
poems which received the highest votes — two poems from 
each meeting — were mailed to all members of the Poetry 
Societ)'. The prizes are to be given, presumably, to the t^ 

[195] 



POETRY: J Mtgar 



of V, 



poems receiving the greatest number of votes from those 
members whose consciences permit them to sanction with 
their votes such a method of choice- 
It may be true that no completely satisfactory manner 
of awarding prizes will ever be devised, but meantime it is 
safe to say that the above method is the worst that could 
possibly be devised. The jury is not even professional, since 
guests as well as members voted at the five meetings; and 
such voting represents, not thoughtful and deliberate judg- 
ment, but the casual and hasty preference of people compe- 
tent and incompetent, who listen, more or less attentively, to 
a group of poems read once or twice aloud. 

At the only meeting which I attended — that of March — 
the two poems receiving the largest votes were, of all the 
twelve or fifteen read, the two which most closely fulfilled 
the journalistic ideal of popular poetry, an ideal which should 
hardly be set up as the Poetry's Society standard of excellence 
in the art. Meantime poems submitted by Robert Frost. 
Witter Bynner, Margaret Widdemer, and the guest of the 
evening, Lawrence Housman (for the poets' names were dis- 
closed after the voting), are not even eligible for the prizes, 
because a casual crowd turned them down. 

Naturally not one of the ten poems thus selected deserves 
to be honored with a prize bearing the cachet of the Poetry 
Society, and many members who respect their art have re- 
frained from considering them. 
The result of such a method of choice can have no signifi- 
I . cilice whatever, and its lack of significance will of course 
'■ i^ to discredit the Poetry Society of America. The society 
[1961 



J 



How Not to Do It 

~a not obliged to award prizes, but if it assumes this obliga- 
tion, it should fulfil it with due dignity and effort at justice, 
so chat the award will be an honor. No doubt the otEcers 
of the Society have already recognized the futility of their 
first year's experiment, and resolved to change the method 
of award next year. It is to be hoped that they will abandon 
altogether the present limitation of the award to poems read 
at the meetings, and give the prizes simply to the two most 
distinguished poems, or books of poems, published by any 
two members of the society during the year. And the Jury 
of Award should be small and of the highest professional 
standing, as with similar juries in painters' and sculptors' 
exhibitions. H. M. 



THE REJECTION SLIP 



f^c-ii:^ 



If the subscription list of this magazine approximated the 
yearly inflow of manuscripts — the editors would hire a long 
string of assistants, have cut flowers replenished daily on 
their desks, and be less harassed generally. Even then, how- 
ever, the impossibility of answering personally each letter 
that reaches the office would be equally manifest. 

What is one to do about such a condition? One can 
not turn oneself into a human machine; the capacity even 
of an inhuman machine is limited. When visiting poets are 
shown the bulging drawers full of one day's incoming verse, 
and arc asked how they would like to have to read it, they 
usually faint on the spot. 

A few fact* may induce s more sympathetic feeling for 



[197] 



i 



POETRY: J Magazine of Ftrse 

the editors, a lesi unpaticDt denunciation of tbc rejoctioa sbp 
xs bnjt&l and dispiriting. What sort of lejectioQ slip would 
not be bniuti and dbpiriting? As one who is responsible for 
M many of thcK barbed arrows, I must confess that not even 
1 can steel my sensitiveness against the rebuke on those few 
occasions when I have been bold enough to invite it. 

But for the facts: All the verse that has come into this 
ofllicc up-to-date has been read by the editors. The first read- 
ing has jjcen considered extremely tmponant, and the editors 
have not been willing to relegate this to underlings or to 
outside readen. If this is the usual method, as I have heard, 
w-ith the larger magazines, it may be one reason why a cer- 
tain conventional standard has so oftcned marked the poetiy 
printed in them. The first reading is vitally important, and 
exciting as well, for in this vast heap of manuscripts may lurk 
a discovery. The handwriting may be slovenly, apparently 
illiterate, yet who knows if it may not be the accidental dis- 
guise of a real poet? Or the name may be quite unfamiliar, 
the work uneven, yet something startles one to a closer scru- 
tiny. I could, in fact, give instances of some important db- 
coveries which were made in just this manner. 

So even he who receives a rejection slip may count upon 
this much editorial attention and consideration from diis 
magazine. I wish often that the poets would show a little 
more consideration for the editors : that they would beg, bor- 
row, or steal a tii'pe-writer; that they would not enclose a 
return envelope three sizes too small for their manuscript; 
ihat they would not send their poems unfolded in an enor- 
mous stiliFened envelope too large for any office cubbyhole, 
[198] 



4 




I 
b 



The Rejection Slip 



w)iich coasequcntlj' gets misplaced and delayed ; thai they 
would not fold each poem separately — where — oh, where — 
did this custom start? — is it a trick to catch the editor? — 
is it — well, heaven only knows what it is, except that it is 
infinitely wearing. 

After three years and a half — about four years — of read- 
ing a mixed assortment of verse, the danger is not so much 
in a growing tolerance for the mistakes of editors — though 
that is considerable — as it is in a certain relaxation of one's 
expectation of the poets — a softening of discipline which 
makes it harder than ever to send out the rejection slip. Yet 
punctually with each morning's mail the hope renews itself 
that genius may be discovered beneath the flap of each en- 
velope ; and punctually with the outgoing mail this hope it 
sealed beneath the flap of the threc-stzes-too-small envelope 
which the poet has so kindly enclosed with his manuscript. 
(N. B. Any envelope is better than none.) 

In the familiar language of childhood, the rejection slip 
hurts the editor far more than it does the poet. TTic poet 
knows that he is a genius; and the editor still hopes to dis- 
cover that he is in each manuscript e.xamined. The editor has 
a hundred sorrows for the poet's one. The poet may swear 
at the editor, and rather adds to his dignity in doing so; but 
the editor, in addressing the poet, has to assume the polite 
demeanor of the dancing master. (I once forsook the official 
manner of a machine for that of a human being in writing 
to a poet; the result was a cataclysm.) 



Truly, the lot of an editor i 



1 hard ( 



[199] 



POETRY: A Mmtatimr •/ FrrMt 



KUBBM DAUO 



1 



Ruben Dario'i woii has a threefold significaiwe : acstfaetH 
cal, historical and sodal. As an aesthete, in the purest raean- 
ing of thii leirn, Ruben Dario k the Spanish Keats: he tau^t 
that "beaut>' is truth, tnith beautjr," and that sincerity is the 
highest virtue. This message he delivered to his people, the 
family of Spanish-speaking countries, with sudi power that 
through his inBuence and thai of the other poets and writers 
who, with him for a leader, formed the revolutionary mod- 
ernist school, Spanish poetry during the last genemtioo was 
changed from the rhetorical, conventional sort of thing into 
which it degenerated after it had flourished gloriously ia 
the time of Gongora, to vibrant, real, sincere song. 

His was a fine "horror of literature" — you will recall Ver- 
laine's dictum. Lf pauvrt Lelian was his master ; not his only 
master, it is true, for, seeking orientation for his genius in 
that pilgrimage of discriminate assimilation that all great 
poets must make before they find themselves, Dario worshiped 
at many a shrine. Nor did our poet lose his own personality, 
but rather enriched it, when he chose, In one of his earliest 
phases, to become a symbolist. The song he made on the 
bald faun's flute came from within his own self. To critics 
who would tag him as belonging to this, that or the other 
school, he would cry: "I am myself!" He despised ser- 
vility, and warned those that sought to imitate his writings 
that at best they would be but as lackeys bearing the uniform 
of his house. Sincerity of expression only can bring forth 
real poetry, and this be knew could not be attained througii 
[200] 



Ruben Darh 

mere Imitation. But he was eager to learn, and the Pre- 
RaphaelJtes of England, the Parnassians and Symbolists of 
France, Carducci among the Italians, and Poe and Whitman 
of the Americans, as well, of course, as the classics of all 
languages, had much to teach him. And the wealth of 
knowledge that he made his own, brought to bear upon his 
worlc, gave it that cosmopolitan bigness that made him a 
truly universal poet. His work, like America, as he would 
often say, is for all humanity. 

With this ideal always before him, it is not surprising 
that he should be, as the phrase goes, a coiner of words, and 
an enemy of steel-ribbed grammars. His work, always im- 
peccable and rich in form, is of supreme importance in the 
history of Spanish literature not only because of the spiritual 
renaissance of which it was the dawn — the awakening of 
Latin America to a realization of its literary individuality — 
but chiefly because of the changes that he wrought in the 
language, giving it a treasure of new expressions, new turns 
of phrase, nuances, in prose as well as in verse. 

To appreciate this achievement justly, it must he remem- 
bered that for centuries the Spanish language had hardly 
been free to follow new paths of development such as Eng- 
lish and French and German had taken. The dykes of 
linguistical traditions raised by the conservative and tyran- 
nical Royal Academy of Spain had all but stagnated literary 
style. Up to Dario's time Spanish prosody was perhaps the 
poorest in Europe; it is true that sundiy measures new to 
the language, such as the Graeco-Lattn hexameter, the French 
alexandrine, and verses based on a four-syllable foot, had 
[201] 



POFFRY: A Mrngmaimm •f Wmrst 



i 



•nn im a< ka In rotai. kd far a kac tiBE Im ml 

Vf COHMC flpcn WNVCtMEi ■ S^MB, faltf OK IMMTIl 0> Wns^ 

V MOMB Mtcr ■mcfyra br tt, ae*er iu^b- 
Aad Ki with nalm 
nm fl ICDK flf ool fr iBrtJ^ wwdv Usno iiivtiU£a oc bqi^ 
e u, or acpncd, nr iiiituL He 

I fltV^V *^"* lull n*il^ I^^Ui liK 

■MMer amfuuMU no loo than the boni poo. Hb vcac 
poiHaei dw vcfr nu^ of pare mnnc. Ruben Dtno wai 
a y imw w of wordi faHy » great as Swinbuine or D*AiKnHi- 
k!o, vidi more ideai dun ddtcr. 

And lincx the ptAlication of FrttaM Profanai, bis foortfa 
bocdc, m 1893, die p"""* iaieniuf in Spanish is iocx»- 
teatabl)r no longer of the modver country bat of die neo-Ladn 
r^uUici of America. It was the tBresting of tbb leadersfa^ 
that made Dario a »dal power io all ihc coontries south 
of the XJnitti States. To realize fully what this means we 
(nuit consider the poet's position in all the Latin, and es- 
pecially in the Spanish' American, countries. The poet there 
is a prophet, an inspired. God-anointed leader of the people. 
He is for us the treasurer of hope, the master of the tomomnr. 

It is true that we have never enriched him with worMlf 
gfxidt as, for instance, Kipling and Mascfield and Walt 

[202] 




I 



Ruben Dario 

Slason are said to have been enriched ; true that the publica- 
> that print his verses do not often pay him for it. But, 
on the other hand, we believe in him. We alone of all 
peoples have elected poets to be our presidents and political 
leaders solely on the ground that they were great poets ; and 
we have not fared so ill as readers of Plato's Rrpublk might 
imagine. For instance, Jose Marti, the Cuban liberator, i 
was also one of her chief poets; and it was because he v 
a poet that he realized the epic task of uniting his people 
solidly and enlisting on their side the sympathy of the entire 
world. The American guns at San Juan Hill and at San- 
tiago but echoed the patriot-poet's songs. 

And Dario, by his singing, united all the Latin- American 
countries, intellectually and morally, arousing them to a 
sense of their true grandeur. When, in one of his sincerest 
poems he said : 

La pairia tt fara tl hombrt It que I'uitte o qui surna, 
which freely translated means: "a man's country is as great 
as his mind and heart are great," each petit pays chaud (the 
bitter phrase is Daudet's) shoot from itself that terrible 
feeling of littleness in size that had so weighed upon it. 

Horrified by the war, he left Europe, where he had lived 
for some time as minister of Nicaragua, his native country, 
to Spain and France, and came to America, late in 1914, 
to preach peace, and to work for a Pan-American Union based 
on a community of ideals and the intellectual fellowship 
of the two Americas. His last great poem, not yet published 
entire, is a magnificent ode voicing this aspiration. During 

[203] 



POETRY: J Mafattne »f Verif 

his visit to this country, early in 1915, he read this poem at I 
Columbia University. He had planned to make a continental I 
tour, starting here. But death blocked his path. He be- I 
came seriously ill in New York ; and in February of tfan J 
year, the forty-ninth of his life, he died at Leon, Nicaragua, ~ 
his native town. 

The solemnity of death has served to emphasize bis ma 
sage of fraternity. Latin America waits to hear it edun 
by the poets of this country. It is dawn. 

Salomon de la Selva 



REVIEWS 



SHELLEV IN HIS LETTERS 



The LdUri of Percy Bfishe Shelley t Edited by Roger log- . 
pen. Bohn's Library, G. Bell and Sons, London. 

That light whose imiie kindles the univene, 
That beauty in nhich all things ytatV sod move. 
That benediction nhich the eclipsing cune 
Of birth can quench not, that susllintng love 
Which, through the neb of being blindly wove 
By man and beiii and earth and air and lea. 
Bum* bright or dim, as each are mirrors of 
The lire (or which all thirst, now beams oa me. 
Consuming the last clouds of cold mortality. 

This stanza of Adonais will recur often to the reader of 
the contradictions and the complications of Shelley's Ufc, j 
as these are revealed in bis fascinating correspondence. 

Without strength to hold up for long at a time the mag- 
nificent torch of his belief that human love is the light that | 
kindles the beauty of creation, Shelley could yet wave the J 
[204] 




I 



Absorbing as it is t 
torch of creative thoi 
life where he leads u 



wild gleam of that flame with a free grace which will long 
waylay mankind's imagination. He waves it in his extremely 
candid and vital letters as expressively as in his verse; for 
me, in general, more expressively. Few of his admirers, 1 
believe, will deny that the stuff of Shelley's poetry is more 
sympathetically communicated in his correspondence with 
Claire Clairmoni alone, or Thomas Love Peacock, or Hogg, 
or Byron alone, than in Julian and Maddalo, Rosalind and 
Hflfn, and ail his controversial verse put together. 

follow the gusty flame of the poet's 
jght through the labyrinths of mortal 
it must be confessed that in the course 
of the two volumes I often forgot to look at the divine fire, 
in my interest in the endlessly wonderful scene of human 
figures, which that light chances to illuminate. Lord Byron, 
Claire Clairmont. John Keats, Leigh Hunt, Godwin, Mary 
Shelley, the gifted Mrs. Boinville — never was a poet's biog- 
raphy more fully peopled than Shelley's with men and 
women of brilliant endowment and striking character, TTiis 
element of the interest commonly attributed to novels, and 
so sadly to seek in numbers of them, is greatly enhanced 
by quotations from Peacock's memoir, from Mrs. Shelley's 
prefatory notes accompanying the first collected edition of her 
husband's poems, and from various other sources, as well as 
by the addition of letters heretofore unpublished, or only 
privately published. 

Time has walked past the day of apologies for Shelley, 
and of defamations. Time has put these in his tabular bag; 

]205[ 



POETRY: A Magazine of Verse 

and at last has given us a book void alike of Jeafircan mis- 
erable malice, and of Professor Dowden's excessive zeal in 
partisanship — a book of amazing and convincing spiritual 
portraits. This is not the place for comment on the won- 
derful tale we may find here of Shelley's relations to men 
and women, beyond the remark that few of its readers will 
be found to deny its power as a human document. "I 
couldn't skip a word of it," cried a friend ; "I read even the 
letters to the money-lenders." 

About poetry, qua poetry, perhaps the most curious and 
arresting observation one will have to make on the topic as 
presented in these two volumes is that Shelley seems to have 
paid on the whole very Utile attention to it. The fluent and 
voluminous expression of an ardent mind, a delightful re- 
source, a natural exercise, Shelley's poetry — and by this I 
mean his writing of poetry — was never with him an absorb- 
ing obsession. He could never have averred for himself 
Poe's saying, "For me, poetry has ever been less a pursuit 
than a passion." Keats' few words on poetry, in his dis- 
tinguished letter to the "beautiful and ineffectual angel," 
outweigh in force and dignity anything presented on the 
subject by his generous admirer. Shelley writes to Peacock: 

I consider poetry vrry subordinate to moral and political tdeace, 
and if I vteie well, certainly 1 would aspire lo the lancr; (or I 
can conceive a great work, embodying the diacoveiiea of all ages, 
and hsriTiDnizing the contending creeds by which raatikind b«ve 
been ruled. F»r frotn me i» such an attempt, and I shall be comeal, 
by exerciting my fancy, to 
and cast what weight 1 can 
Giant of Arthegall holds. 



[2061 



I 



Shelley in His Letters 

The Giant of Arthegall, one is asked to remember, is that 
defeated hero and lover of justice in the Faerie Queene, who 
is knocked into the sea by mere brute power. And it is on 
record that Shelley once said beautifully, to the "forceful" 
author of 

The mouDtBin «heep were tweeter, 
But tbe villey sheep were fallcr — 
"I am of the Giant's faction." 

Too little concerned with poetry as an art, Shelley can 
yet hardly say a word about it without revealing the grace 
of a great nature, nobly indifferent to the mere question 
of career, modest and impersonal concerning his own achieve- 
ments, very splendidly occupied with the eternal verities. 
Shelley is indeed too modest by far concerning his own 
achievements; and yet you would not have him in this re- 
spect other than be was. 

You will go back again after you have read the letters, 
and read the poetry: and you will agree with Shelley that 
Adonais is his greatest work; and look with his vision on 
the vibrant light and cloud-swept way of our mortal lives 
through cosmos. The charm of reading his verse will be re- 
created for you by the fine pleasure of reading the corre- 
spondence of one of the world's greatest letter- writers. 

These volumes have another haunting beauty, the beauty 
of a way of human intercourse which has now all but dis- 
appeared. Deserted for the short-cuts of telegrams and 
telephones and the trails of an earth compressed by innumer- 
able conveniences of travel and information, the old great 

[207] 




» the ait flvmnfiac jcflMr 

CMw^tiinMt ciMHC pBouM an Tlmcnma Moniw bk mt m 
whrJubc twiJMiM iwt MDBKnonu. At VI adniRf c1ibb| 
the book nflatmrj, "No one will ever write tah knets 



A&KXMBaC AVD THB VSW KEAUTT 



/<f4//, by Waiter Coorad Amirixre. HoscMn Miffin C& 
The problnn thu cfaieAr aeiutes the mind irf die mmieni 
aniM — I mrai the artin who is poMCned fay life awl who 
ntu>t cxprew ti> beauty as dearly and noocidy as he can — 
is, what position he should take toward leaLty. 

The positions that for many yean used to be taken as a 
matter of coune by English or American artists, are no 
longer tenable. The modern painter, for instaiKc, if he is 
a itudeni, a searcher, will no longer be satisfied with express- 
ing the poetry of nature, not even in the styles of Inness or 
Corot. Prettinew, which used to be called beauty ; preadii- 
neia, wistfulnccs, more or less refined allegory; realism, 
whether of light, line or substance; spirituality — none of 
these will answer his soul's needs, not entirely. His aim is to 
exprew the rhythm — the color or line rhythm — the song of 
reality. His manner may be fantastic, whimsical, or even 
"realistic." His highest ideal perhaps is to be exdted enou^ 
by the wine drunk by his senses to create something. CreaicI 
Something new I As the trees and the moon and the sun 
were new on the first day. 

[208] 




\ 



Arensberg and the Nnv Reality 

Of course his attainments are not always so great as his 
aspirations. 

How far are these new strivings — these new effects — 
attainable in poetry? 

Poetry has some advantages over painting, and it is also 
under some disadvantages. Its advantages lie in the fact that 
the poet has always used reality with more freedom — bold- 
nesa — than the painter ; and so has escaped, even in its most 
conservative form, the prettiness and other defects so distaste- 
ful to the modern palate. In his free handling of reality 
he has to a certain extent reached the ideal of the modem 
ardsc. 

But poetry being made up of words, of which each one 
has a distinct sense, it is hard for the poet to escape 
realism, with its temptation toward prettiness, more or less 
refined allegory, etc. A combination of colors, even if one 
could not understand the harmony underlying it, might still 
seem beautiful. I believe that a color-symphony of 
Kandinsky's has some charm even for those who can not see 
in it what that painter expects them to sec. While words 
without sense would of course be nonsense. 

Mallarme has tried to overcome this difficulty by devising 
a new tdnd of symbolism, or rather by emphasizing an estab- 
lished poetic form: he tried to express emotions pictorially. 
But this, if accepted, could hardly bring us any nearer, as it 
would turn an art in many ways more advanced than paint- 
ing back to an earlier stage of painting; and Mallarme him- 
self seems to have recognized this. 

[209] 



POETRY: A Mtfaxint •/ Vtrtt 

That ihoa^u occurred m me wluk resdtag Mr. Araa- 
berg's IdaU. This poet, modem as he a, md sconniig n om- 
ccal the ioilaRKX of ftfallanne on tm iniod, seenB lo have 
recQEDued the difficulty of cxpressuig in poctiy die e ff ect) 
the inodero painter expresses in his an. With perhaps two 
or three exceptions, he submits to what appears inevitable. 
In most of his poems there i* a boldness in the handlins of 
symbols, or a capricious injsdcisni. which distinguisho than 
as iwcniieth-ccDtury work; but on the whole they are not, 
as regards their newness alone, diSeimt from other poems. 
The present reviewer, though not reatty to adniic that 
poetry could not be brought more into accord with ibc ideals 
of the modern painter, has read this book with VC17 grcit 
pleasure. I can read again and again the Sonf of ffcr Stmh 
Set Fret, sung from above the clouds: 

Whai can ihf>- be bowing under. 

Wild aod Ttanr 

Petp, lod draw Ihe cloud* ■•under. 

Peep, and wave a dawn. 

Or, in a somewhat similar strain thou^ tn a dtssimilar mood, 
and speaking probably of the poet, in a poem entitled Dirfe: 

Make of the laaou about the ttya of Kpacc, 

You nho upon the eardi are doing ootbing. 

The circle of ■ mallow 

In the twiligbl. 
When this poet is a little mystical he is convincing — a rare 
and felicitous faculty; as in After-Thought and in To the 
Gatherer. Among so many beautiful poems, I really do not 
know which to single out. In Falling Atleep, perhaps the 
most modern poem in the book, the author speaks of die 
[2I0J 



Areniberg and the Neuf Reality 

0*8 vague wanderings, before losing consciousness, in this 
charming manner: 

Lay aside your landali 

Thai have fled 

Down a night of candlra 

By the bed. 
ComUer the LiUts, with its wistful-worldly advice. Land- 
scape and Figtirrs, At Daybreak, Servant, June, The Swan — 
each one of these is as beautiful as the other. Human reads 
loo much like a translation of Mallarme. Autobiographic 
i do not clearly understand ; it seems to be based on the mys- 
tical side of Cubism — its least important side, strange as this 
may sound. Max Miehehon 

OUR CONTEMPORARIES 
I 

"Timeliness is not one of Poetry's vices," writes one of 
our contributors, adding a "thank heaven 1" by way of pro- 
pitiation. Because of an effort to practice this vice we must 
make amends to Seiior de la Selva, the distinguished young 
Nicaraguan poet and critic, whose article on Ruben DarJo, 
listed for our May number, was delayed till June, and then 
July, because of the pressure of subjects more immediate; 
until his topic had been appropriated by Mr. Silvester Baxter 
in the June Poetry Review of America. 

In this, the second number of the new Boston paper, the 

editor graciously thanks Poetry and the later organs of the art 

for "breaking a path through an unknown field beset with 

great obstacles," The path of progress, like that of true love, 

[211 J 



POETRY: A Magazine of Vtr 



«fi9 



never did run HDOotb for either poet or editor, but 
with for &fr. Braitbwaitc the minimum of rocks and bnun- 
blo. In size of page and weight of paper the new sheet 
wenu a bit formidable, but ii looks important with its Urge 
type, and there is room in it for contrasts. We find Joyce 
Kilmer and John Gould Fletcher side by side. Amy Lowell 
talking about imagists and Amelia Josephine Burr praising 
Hermann Hagedom. The piice de rinttanct of the number 
in Louis Ledoux's Periepkone in Hadet, no doubt a very 
distinguished classic-lyric-dramatic poem of a kind which I 
find it difficult to read. 

Conlemporary Verte for June devotes itself to "poems of 
childhood." Of these W. A. Percy's Little Page's Souf, 
Alwin West's Yetterday, and Mary Carolyn Davies' Am- 
bition seem the most childlike. 

But Miss Davics is at her best in Others for April, which 
.arrives rather tardily. We always look for Others, no 
matter who or what is waiting. "There is an aviator spirit 
in that magazine," says Carl Sandburg — a gay defiance of 
wind and weather. Mr. Bodenheim inaugurates cleverly 
a review department, but I don't know — reviews are less 
aviatory than poems. H, M. 

II 

The St. Louis Art i«ague offers a prize of one hundred 
dollars for the "best lyric poem," defining "lyric" to mean 
"any short impassioned utterance in rhythmical language," 
whether in a "regular" form or free verse. The contest will 

[212J 



I 



Our Contemporaries 

dose December first, 1916. Further conditions may be 
learned by addressing The St. Louis Art League, St. 
Louis, Mo. 

Ill 
A portrait medallion of Rupert Brooke is to be set up in 
the chapel at Rugby, where he was bom, and lived till he 
went to Cambridge. It will be done in marble by J, Havard 
Thomas, on the basis of Schell's portrait. Admirers of the 
poet may send any contribution, from a dime to five dollars, 
to the Chicago treasurer, Mr. Maurice Browne, 434 Fine 
Arts Building. The money will be sent to England without 
deduction, and any excess will be given to the Royal Literary 
Fund. 

CORRESPONDENCE 

AUGUST STRAMM 

Dear Poetry: Too little notice has been taken of the 
death of Captain August Stramm, the young German soldier 
and poet, who was killed last autumn during a cavalry 
charge in Russia. 

Stramm gave poetry a new method, poetic drama a new 
field of imaginative vision. Yet he was but little known, even 
in Germany, when he died. As with Rupert Brooke, the 
glamor of his death may render tardy justice to his poetry. His 
gift to imaginative literature was just beginning to be per- 
ceived, and one or two French literary circles began to show 
signs of his influence. Eventually he might have meant to 
Germany what Synge did to Ireland. 
[213] 



POETRY: A Magazine of Vent 

He created five Storm-Books, and it is by these that 1 
know him. He may have published other volumes. If so, 
it was obscurely. Sancta Susanna and Die Haidebraut are 
the two little books by which he will be longest remembered, 
English translations of these plays (a typographical mess) 
were published in Poet-Lore during 1914. A great many of 
Stramm's poems remain uncollected in the pages of Der 
Sturm, and probably elsewhere. 

I know of no contemporary poet who has compressed 
vaster distances of wind and sunlight into a line or two. He 
absorbed a wide moor in a single pulsation, and restored it 
in an inevitable rhythm transformed by his own vision of its 
beauty into a personal utterance. He was plunged in the 
mystery of open spaces. He denied nothing a secret. 

I think that mountains would have been a revelation to 
him. He required shadows to satisfy his play of light, and 
he wove them into wonderful lyric patterns of terror and 
exultation, as if they were flaming projections of his own 
spirit of worship, animate in form. But he required dis- 
tances, if only for contrast. Sometimes they were spiritual 
distances, to he found only in the uttermost reaches of the 
human heart, but always they were passionately linked to 
nature by some form of creative prayer. He was not at all 
interested in the surface embodiments of nature, in "pretty" 
landscapes. What he felt behind all the beauty of the world 
was its elemental passions, and he believed these to be the 
projections of human passions in waves of wind and light and 
water, in flames of earth. He felt the terror of beauty rather 

[214] 





I 

I 



August Stramm 

than its charm, and he surrendered his heart to that. Per- 
haps he always saw nature in a human image. 

ause his heaven was subjective, the material facts of life 
did not press him closely. He lived in a world he had 
created in the image of a personal ideal. He probably re- 
garded his death on the battlefield as a casual incident. 

I find it impossible to convey the method by which Stramm, 
out of the simplest words, evokes the sense of space and 
fatality that encompasses all his action. He can wring the 
most tremendous emotional values out of utter stillness. In 
his plays, the characters more often than not speak by their 
silences. The words he gives to them to utter are often 
merely counters, or masks if you like, to conceal the passions 
smouldering just beneath the surface. His own life must 
have been a concealment. 

He was a strange man drifting through life ; in the world, 
but not of it; never puzzled, but often unhappy; feeding 
the fires of his inspiration with his own passion for nature ; 
relieving his spiritual nostalgia, in the only way in which 
it can be relieved, by artistic expression; a man out of his 
time, who walked alone, yet had friends ; a man whom Ger- 
many felt that she could afford to waste. Perhaps it was 
because he had a Russian soul. Edward J. O'Brien 

THE PARTING , ^.''<^^''"^ 

We receive the following report of a conversation from a 

contributor who leads a double life, being not only a poet 

but also the fortunate half-author of that witty and gently 

[215J 



POETRY: J Mafarine of Vtrit 

satiric and altogether dcUgbtful, as well as ver>' popular, t 
edjr, Bunker Bean: 

"ice, t don't like ihif gutter nufi 

YoD modeni poets pull ; I think 

Your feeling crude, youT ven«« tou^ 

Your »rnte of txauty on the blink. 

Now jou wke TinnjwjQ . , ." I took, 

Initeid, 1 >econ<] cigarette: 

"Fine I fire iwiyl bring □■ to book— 

L*»l we forget, leii we forget!" 

"But leriouily," Bill rttumed, 
■ThiB MM*r* fellow, with hil crew 
Of God-foraaken gbosti who burned 
Thric loaji^es, once, with the Devil'i »tew! 
Can't ihey itop howling now they're dead? 
Why .hould we worrj; if Jar*d Hill 
Drank whiskey, or grieve because he fed 
Hi) jim-jami through a rolling mill? 
What's It to ua that Susan Golch 
Went mad when his baslatd-babe she choked 
Down in die swamp by the melon-patch? 
And what do we care hovi Susan cioaked?" 

"What do we care, Bill ?— What do we care 

When we find a screech-owl dead on the snow 

Nothing; unless in its life we share — 

And we share so little in life, I know. 

'Queens have died, ^oung and fair* . . . wc weep 

At (he image of fair youth fallen . . . Good God, 

Fait vouth has fallen, heap upon heap, 

And it isn't our tears, Bill, that color the sod. 

But here and there since the world began 

Some hearts have ached that young queens should fall ; 

And once in a blue moon happens t man 

Whose great heart aches for the fate of all: 

A man who isn't set upon queens 

Any more than on crones, who seems to detect 

In even a protiitutc's aoul what meani — 

Well, somcihing not measured by iaiellectl 

And when that niaD speaks. Bill, we listen I Kit ni 

[216] 



The Parting 



May be Vitlan (a ibicf, by the way], or may be 

Jeiui, who died a death of shame 

BnneeQ two ihievea once on Calvary. 

Or it may be Burn*, or Masefield — who Icnowi? — 

Or Master!, or — " 

"Rubbish, my boy! you're dreaming! 
When Muclield can write, "Where are last year's snow 
I promise to let you go oo — blaspheming. 
But you'll never convince roe that Susan Goich 
Ii the peer of Yseuli or Elaine I I might 
Say more but — I'm tired. Have you Kot a match? 
Teonyion . . . Masters . . . Hell I Good night!" 



NOTES 

Our readers of last month will remember that Thret Traveltrt 
Watch a Sunriir, which opens this number, received the priK of 
one hundred dollars which was offered last autumn by the Players' 
Producing Company, lo be awarded by the staff of Pomiy and the 
doDor for a one-act play in verse. About eighty plays were received, 
five of which received Honorable Mention. 

Mr. Wallace Stevens, author of the prize-winning play, is ■ 
young New York lawyer, now resident for a time in Hartford, 
Conn. The first publication of his verse was in our war number — 
November, 1514 — and since then he has appeared in PoEtHY, 
Olhtrs, and elsewhere. 

Mr. Frederic Manning, a young English poet, who ii now 
lerving his country in the army, was one of the earliest contrib- 
utors to POFTKT. His books of verse are: The fifH of Bruttkild, 
Setnt$ and Parlraili, and Poemi, all published by John Murray. 

Mist Iris Barry, another young EDglish poet, has published little 
asyet. 

Mr. Edgar Lee Masters, of Chicago, needs no introduction. Hi* 
laleil book ii Songi and Salirts (Macmillan Co.). 

Mi«s Lily A. Long, of Sl Paul, Mtnn., was an early contributor 

lo POBTXT. 

Of ih« five young poets who arc now introduced to our readera 
with brief poems: 



[217] 



POETRY: J Ma 



of Vfrtt 



"Pclcr Norden" (Mr. P. G. Norberg), who was born in Sweden 
and ia now in Stockholm, has bctn chief ediiar of Hemlaadtt, « 
Chicago Swcdiih wrekly, and has published tno books of pocnu In 
his native language. 

. Lyman Biyson, when an undergraduate of the UniveniQr 



of Michigaa in 1909, was 


■he firs 


winner of the Field Priwt for 


poetry. Since 191] h« ha 


5 been 


member of ihc faculty aDd a 


resident of Ann Arbor. 


He h 


ai published verse in variona 


ntagazinea. 






Gretchcn Warren (Mr 


. Fiske 


Warren), of Harvard, MlM.; 


Lulu Weeks Knight, (Mr 


Mauri 


e Knight), of Akron, Ohio; and 



Mr. John Regnautt El I y son, of Richmond, Va., have publilhed 



little 



I yet. 



The three little girls represented in our Forms by Children are 
all daughter* of poets — Arvia Meckaye of Mr. Percy Mackxye, 
and Elsa and Hilda Conkling of Grace Hazard Conkling (Mrs. R. 
P.). Mrs. Conkling of course transcribed hei daughters' little 
songs. In sending them she wrote: "My two baby girls have 
sung or chanted these 'poems' to themselves, unconscious that J 
was putting them down." 

BOOKS RECEIVED 

Reprievr. and Olhtr Pormi, by Charles Josiah Adams. J, S. O^lvie 

Pub. Co., New York. 
Thr Htarl of Ihe Slitger, by Fred Whitney, Stanford Univ. Freaa. 
Humorous Poems, by Ignatius Brennan. Richard G. Badger. 
What is Yaur LrgionT by Grace Fallow Norton. HoughloD Miffiin 

Co. 
Wilt 0' the World, A Shapesprarean Tercentenary Maiqut. by I»a- 

belle Fiske ConanL Privately printed, Wellesley, Mau. 
Oh Ihe Ovrrland and Other Poems, by Frederick Mortimer Clipp. 

Yale Univ. Presa. 
Flashlights, by Mar^ Aldii. DuHield it Co. 

Htldrrberg Harmonies, by Magdalene Merritt. Privately printed. 
Mushrooms, by Alfred Kreymborg. John Marshall Co,, Ltd, 
Chirago Poems, by Carl Sandburg. Henry Holt & Co. 
Over Ihe Braiirr, by Robert Graves. Poetry Bookshop, London. 
Shipi in Port, by Lewi* Wonhington Smith. G. P. Putaam'a Sona. 

plats: 
Euripides: Iphigenia t« Tauris, an English Version, by Witter 

Bynner. Mitchell Keonerley. 



t 



[218] 



pL. vm 



NO. V 



oetry 

•f Verse 

Exiiced by Harriet Monroe 



AUGUST 1916 

Prayer 

ngs of ■ Day hi Sprinj^D 

. Dinton Jtir,ri>h Ma^arck 

Amy S«htce-Smith 

. Rulli Hall 



I KcDcxan 
PConutwnt 
II fi«iman — Corrnpondence* 



. aiurge Moore 



237 
251 



Th« Dead Irish Pmu I-U 



mtxy 



'JlitbltKmtcilXitK 



Vol. VIII 
No. V 



AUGUST, 1915 



/ / 

1777 

I — THE TRUMPBT-VINB AKBOR 

] HE throats of the little red trumpet-flowen 
are wide open, 
And the clangor of brass beats against the 

hot sunligjit. 
They bray and blare at the burning sky. 
Red I Red! Coarse notes of red, 
Trumpeted at the blue sky. 
In long streaks of sound, molten metal, 
The vine declares itself. 
Clang! — from its red and yellow trumpets; 
Clang! — from its long, nasal trumpets. 
Splitting the sunlight into ribbons, tattered and shot with 




[219] 



fcY: A M» 



ine of y trt* 



TtA in the cool arbor, in a green and gold twilight. ~ 
It is very still, tor I cannot hear the trumpets, 
I only know that they are red and open. 
And that the sun alwvc the arbor shakes with heat. 
My quill is newly mended. 
And makes fine-drawn lines with its point. 
Down the long white paper it makes little lines, 
Just lines — up — down — criss-cross. 
My heart is strained out at the pin-point of my quiO; 
It is thin and writhing like the marks of the pen. 
My hand marches to a squeaky tune, 
It marches down the paper to a squealing of fifes. 
My pen and the trumpet- flowers, 
And Washington's armies away over the smoke-tree to the 

southwest. 
"Yankee Doodle", my darling! It is you against the British, 
Marching in your ragged shoes to batter down King George. 
What have you got in your hat ? Not a feather, I wager. 
Just a hay-straw, for it is the harvest you are fighting for. 
Hay in your hat, and the whites of their eyes for a targetl 
Like Bunker Hill, two years ago, when I watched all day 

from the housetop, 
Through Father's spy-glass. 
The red city, and the blue, bright water, 
And puffs of smoke which you made. 
Twenty miles away. 
Round hy Cambridge, or over the Neck, 
But the smoke was white — white! 

[220] 



7777 

To-day the trumpet-flowers are red — red — 

And I cannot see you fighting; 

But old Mr. Dimond has fled to Canada, 

And Myra sings "Yankee Doodle" at her milking. 

The red throats of the trumpets bray and clang in the 
sunshine, 
And the smoke-tree puffs dun blossoms into the blue air. 



II — THE CITY OF FALUNG LEAVES 

Leaves fall, 
Brown leaves. 

Yellow leaves streaked with brown. 
They fall. 
Flutter, 
Fall again. 
The brown leaves. 
And the streaked yellow leaves. 
Loosen on their branches 
And drift slowly downwards. 
One, 

One, two, three. 
One, two, five. 

All Venice is a falling of autumn leaves — 
Brown, 
And yellow streaked with brown. 

[221] 



POETRY: A Magazine of Verse 

"That sonnet, Abate, 
Beautiful, 

I am quite exhausted by it. 
Your phrases turn about my heart, 
And stifle me to swooning. 
Open the window, I beg. 

Lord! What a strumming of fiddles and mandolins! 
Tis really a shame to stop indoors. 
Call my maid, or I will make you lace me yourself. 
Fie, how hot it is, not a breath of air! 
See how straight the leaves are falling. 
Marianna, I will have the yellow satin caught up with silver 

fringe. 
It peeps out delightfully from under a mantle. 
Am I well painted to-day, caro Abate miof 
You will be proud of me at the Ridotto, hey ? 
Proud of being cavaliere servente to such a lady ?" 
"Can you doubt it, bellissima Contessaf 
A pinch more rouge on the right cheek. 
And Venus herself shines less ..." 
"You bore me, Abate, 
I vow I must change you I 
A letter, Achmet? 

Run and look out of the window. Abate. 
I will read my letter in peace." 

The little black slave with the yellow satin turban 
Gazes at his mistress with strained eyes. 

[222] 



7777 



His yellow turban and black skin 

Are gorgeous — barbaric 

The yellow satin dress with its silver flashings 

Lies on a chair, 

Beside a black mantle and a black mask. 

Yellow and black, 

Gorgeous — barbaric. 

The lady reads her letter, 

And the leaves drift slowly 

Past the long windows. 

"How silly you look, my dear Abate, 

With that great brown leaf in your wig. 

Pluck it off, I beg you, 

Or I shall die of laughing." 

A yellow wall, 
Aflare in the sunlight, 
Chequered with shadows — 
Shadows of vine-leaves, 
Shadows of masks. 

Masks coming, printing themselves for an instant. 
Then passing on. 

More masks always replacing them. 
Masks with tricoms and rapiers sticking out behind 
Pursuing masks with veils and high heels, 
The sunlight shining under their insteps. 
One, 
One, two, 

[223] 



POETRY: A Mmfmziue •/ Verse 

One, two, tfaree. 

There h a tfanxiging of shadows oo the hot waU, 

FUigrted at the top with mowing leaves. 

Yellow sunlight and Uack shadows. 

Yellow and blad^ 

Gorgeous — barbaric 

Two masb stand together, 

And die shadow of a leaf falls through diem. 

Marking the wall where they are not. 

From hat-tip to shoulder-dp. 

From elbow to sword-hilt. 

The leaf falls. 

The shadows mingle, 

Blur together, 

Slide along the wall and disappear. 

Gold of mosaics and candles, 
And night-blackness lurking in the ceiling beams. 
Saint Mark's glitters with flames and reflections. 
A cloak brushes aside. 
And the yellow of satin 

Licks out over the colored inlays of the pavement. 
Under the gold crucifixes 
There is a meeting of hands 
Reaching from black mantles. 
Sighing embraces, bold investigations, 
Hide in confessionab, 
Sheltered by the shufliing of feet. 

[224] 



1777 

Gorgeous — barbaric 

In its mail of jewels and gold, 

Saint Mark's ilooks down at the swarm of black masks ; 

And outside in the palace gardens brown leaves fall, 

Flutter, 

Fall. 

Brown, 

And yellow streaked with browil. 

Blue-black the sky over Venice, 
With a pricking of yellow stars. 
There is no moon, 

And the waves push darkly against the prow 
Of the gondola, 
Coming from Malamocco 
And streaming toward Venice. 
It is black under the gondola hood, 
But the yellow of a satin dress 
Glares out like the eye of a watching tiger. 
Yellow compassed about with darkness, 
Yellow and black. 
Gorgeous — barbaric 
The boatman sings, 
It is Tasso that he sings ; 

The lovers seek each other beneath their mantles. 
And the gondola drifts over the lagoon, aslant to the coming 

dawn. 
But at Malamocco in front, 

[225] 



POETRY: d Ms,mzime of Ferse 

In Venice behind, 
Fall the leaves, 
Brown, 

And yellow streaked with brown. 

They fall, 

Flutter, 

Fall. 



Jmf Lowell 



[226] 



PRAISE OF LOVE 



In lime of hunger and drought Love is glad, 
For Love Is food, and wine, and fire. 
The eyes of love are gentle as the doves', 
The face of Love fairer than flowers is. 
Her breasts make challenge mutely for caresses. 
Her loins are hollowed for her lover's rest. 
Her hands make new life spring beneath their touch. 
Her lips arc velvet-smooth and made for kisses. 
Her hair like golden serpents writhes about 
Down o'er her flanks, a soft and shining shower. 
Her eyes are pools where violets are drowned, 
Her voice is music, and her mind is wisdom. 
Her odor is a heaven-sweet perfume, 
Sweeter than woods in spring or summer gardens. 
The tired rest themselves against her heart; 
The feast of a thousand vineyards is hers 
And the flowers wherewith she decks herself 
Shall never die — shall never die. 
The gardens of God have tlieir seasons — 
Flowerless and fruitless half the year; 
But the gardens of Love are everlasting — 
Their flowers and fruit are eternal. 
The strong man's power is but for a day ; 
When it goes, 'tis but as a tale that's told. 
But the power of Love is mightier than the sword's 
And it stays while life does. 

[227] 



POETRY: A Magazine of Verse 

Riches come hardly and go swiftly, leaving nothing; 

But Love comes early and abides forever. 

A blossom-decked altar is the bed of Love, 

Her festivals the sacraments of life. 

The song of songs is the song of Love — \ 

Ever sung, yet never ending; g. aC.*^^^ 

The song of Love is the song of life. /r* ^^^ '^^ 



PRAYER 

Many are the cries sent upward to God's throne: 
The cry for justice comes out of the depths-— 
The depths of woe; 

The cry for mercy from the depths of sin ; 
And mothers of slain soldiers cry for courage — 
G)urage to bear the ills that go with life. 
The children pray with souls all innocent 
(Yet mindful of each little trespass wrought) 
They pray for a pure heart; and soldiers pray 
That God may save their dear ones from war's plagues; 
And beggars pray for bread, or pleasant weather. 
But from the high, high places of the world. 
The prayer, when prayer there is, is all for power — 
Power and glory, and honor — forever: nothing more. 

Jean O'Brien 



[228] 



SUMMER IN CORONADO 

Great sun, why are you pitiless? 

All day your glance is sharp and keen 

Upon the hilb that once were green. 

Where summer, sere and passionless, 

Now lies brown-frocked against the sky 

And makes of them her resting place, 

For she has drunk the valleys dry. 

You never turn away your face. 

And I, who love you, cannot bear 

Your long, barbaric, searching look 

Down through the low cool flights of air — 

Your tirelessness I cannot brook. 

For all my body aches with light 

And you have glutted me with sight. 

With flooding color made me blind 

To that which is more soft and kind ; 

Till I have longed for clouds to roll 

Between you and my naked soul. 

O great beloved, hide away. 

That I may miss you for a day. 

Marguerite Wilkinson I 

- 'i -*' 



[229] 



POETTRY: A Ms^szime •/ Ferse 

'At thirty he sixgs of a day in spring 



as the push of wind coold drive 
I ran the brookside. 
Curving in and Cuming out 
Toward the reaches of the distant meadows 
Flaunting in the sun 
Beyond nxf si^t. 

I cannot tell jou why I ran. 

I was ten years old • • . 
And that rooming Mother kissed me 
And Father smiled a curious smile; 
Then both of them turned me loose 
Within the meadow, 
White and green and gold 
With the surtled color of the May. 

Perhaps they knew 
I should find the path 
To the orchard, 
On the sheltered southern hill 
Where peach and apple bloom were mingled. 

Perhaps they knew 
That dark would find me 
Waking from my dreams 

[230] 



At Thirty He Sings of a Day in Spring 



Of meadows infinite and eternal, 

Greener far than the meadows of the earth, 

Where I could run forever. 

Perhaps they knew that I would waken 
Dusted over, pollen-scented, 
With my eyes like meadow pook 
Mirroring the stars. 

DOWN the; wind 

Down the wind 
The snipes are calling. 
And running fast 
On many gleaming beaches. 

And slender birches. 
Flaunting in the wind, 
Are green and silver girb 
Dancing to the calling — 
To the calling of the snipes 
Along the gleaming beaches. 



\ 
\ 



Clinton Joseph Masseck 



"J 



J2JU 



POETRY: A Ma§a%ime of Verse 

BRANDED 

To that typical plaiuswum, L. S. 

The spell of the desert is on me — it's got me fast and sure. 
And I must leave the easy trail to follow tbe desert's lure; 
I'm marked with the signs of its branding — ^wild qtc, blad: 

lip, raw skin ; 
Through hunger, thirst, through hell I'll go to follow the 

cursed thing! 

What is the spell of the desert? — how can a fellow say? 
Is it the sun on the drifting sands of a blinding, burning day ? 
Perhaps the hiss of a rattler coiled in a clump of mesquite? 
Or maybe the little dust-devils running on twisted feet? 

You say it's the blaze of colors that come when daylight goes, 
Colors that never had a name and only the desert knows; 
And then the sudden drop of night, so still you can hear the 

tread 
Of a coyote nosing the water-hole, or the turn of your 

broncho's head. 
I tell you, the spell Is none of these: it's something a man 

can't see; 
But what it is that haunts the place you will never learn 

from me. 
I only know it's branded me — this much I can understand. 
And I must leave the easy trail to wander that burning land. 

[232] 



Branded 



The spell of the desert is on me — it's got me fast and sure, 
And I must leave the easy trail to follow the desert's lure. 
I'm marked with the signs of its branding — ^wild eye, black 

lip, raw skin. 
Through hunger, thirst, through hell I'll go to follow the 

cursed thing! i 

Amy SebreeSmith I 



QUATRAINS 
/ 

THE WOLF AT THE. DOO 

\ 



^ 



The Russian traveler in the stoi^^ lest 
The wolf attack, casts out his pr^ious store. 

So we surrender all that we hold 
To drive back him who clamors at the door. 

THE ANNIVERSARY 



With no observance is my birthday set 

From other times aside. 
But once each year — ^would God I oDuld 

Comes back the night I died. 




Ruth Hal 



[233] 



POETRY: A Magazine of Verse 

NIGHT FOR ADVENTURES 

Sometimes when fragrant summer dusk comes in widi scent 
of rose and musk 
And scatters from their sable husk the stars like yellow 
grain, 
Oh then the ancient longing comes that lures me like a roll 
of drums 
To follow where the cricket strums his banjo in the lane. 

And when the August moon comes up and like a shallow 
silver cup 
Pours out upon the fields and roads her amber-colored 
beams, 
A leafy whisper mounts and calls from out the forest's moss- 
grown halls f 
To leave the city's somber walls and take the road o' 
dreams. 
A call that bids me rise and strip, and naked all from toe 
to lip 
To wander where the dewdrops drip from ofi the silent 
trees, 
And where the hairly spiders spin their nets of silver, 
fragile-thin, 
And out to where the fields begin, like down upon the 
breeze. 

Into a silver pool to plunge, and like a great trout wheel 
and lunge 

[234] 



Night for Adventures 

Among the lily bonnets and the stars reflected there ; 
With face upturned to lie afloat, with moonbeams rippling 
round my throat, 
And from the slimy grasses plait a chaplet for my hair. 

Then, leaping from my rustic bath, to take some winding 
meadow-path ; 
Across the fields of aftermath to run with flying feet, 
And feel the dewdrop-weighted grass that bends beneath me 
as I pass. 
Where solemn trees in shadowy mass beyond the highway 
meet. 

And, plunging deep within the woods, among the leaf-hung 
solitudes 
Where scarce one timid star intrudes into the breathless 
gloom, 
Go Maping down some fern-hid way to scare the rabbits in 
their play. 
And see the owl, a phantom gray, drift by on silent plume. 

To fling me down at length and rest upon some damp and 
mossy nest. 
And hear the choir of surpliced frogs strike up a bub- 
bling tune; 
And watch, above the dreaming trees, Orion and the Hyades 
And all the stars, like golden bees around the lily-moon. 



[235] 



POETRY: A Mafazime of Verse 

Then who can say if I have gpoe a-gjpsyuig fnMn dusk till 
dawn 
In company with fay and faun, whtat firefly-lanterns 
gleam? 
And have I danced on cobwebs thin to Master Locust's 
mandolin — 
Or have I spent the night in bed, and was it all a dream ? I 



THE FAERIES' FOOL 

Thus spake my faerie sponsors long ago, 

Weaving wild spells that I might do their will : 

(Laughing they spoke — and yet my mother wept, 
Cuddling me closer still!) 



"We name thee Fey-heart, little newborn soul — 

Go thou and serve the world's most foolish things: 

Whistle through thumbs to moldy garden-seeds, 
And brush the wood-gnat's wings. 

• 

We give thee cobwebs and a reel of dreams 
To pay the tavern's score for wine and bread. 

Go thou, small soul, and spend thy elfin coin, 

And make thy storm-swept bed." > 

Anita Fitch / 

■ [236] 



ADVENTURING 

There, little swimmer — that was a good, game fight. 

If you'd gone down again but all's well now — 

The shore is close now, scarce a quarter-mile, 
And we'll be drinking tea before you know it. 

Slow work, girlie, it does seem slow, I know — 
But that's no matter, so we're moving in. 
The wind, I think, is holding us back a little. 

Odd that there isn't anyone in sight! 
It seems we'll have to make it by ourselves. 
We must keep moving in. My arm, my arm — 
It's all right now, I see it's moving yet. 
But I can't feel it. Strange . . . 

This wind ... 

The water 
Is fishy — did you notice that? It smells. 
And then it pulls, keeps pulling, pulling G)ld. 

No, dear, that's not the way we go, not down. 
That was a strange idea, to go down. 

Still, curly-head, it seems quite simple, too: 
You always had uncommon notions, dear. 
And figured out such strange adventures always. 
This new idea may be very fine; 

[237] 



POETRY: A Ms^sxime •/ Verse 

It may he even wQd enoucfi far fou. 
My little wild one. For there will be cavci — 
Youll pick us out a little wonder-csre 
With solilen portals — 0oUen as your hair. 
It will be very cozy, widi four rooms — 
And alwa3rs the dear coed water — you and I 
Will find weird flowers in strange and secret 
You and I — 

Yes-you are always right— 
We'll go — my love — we'll go adventuring — ^ -^ ^^^ 



>'.- 



JL-J 



i 



GOLDENROD 

Heigh-ho, the proud batallions 

That tread the gleaming hill, 
That muster for the sun, their king. 

To do his flaming will. 

With golden pennants streaming, 

With myriad brazen spears. 
They drive the fleeing summer 

Over the fallen years. 

John Russell McCarthy 



[238] 



ISAAC AND REBEKAH 

I 

In the cave, which he had paid for with his gold, 
Had Abraham laid Sarah unto rest; 
And, being past the ordinary old. 
Sent forth his steward on a far behest — 
To bring from out his fatherland a wife 
Of their own kindred for his son. But life 
Ebbed from him ere the man had long been gone. 
Vet died he calmly, dreaming all was done 
Because he wished It and so loved his son. 



Isaac was gentle ; his full beard was soft ; 
His eyes were often on the sky, and oft 
They wandered o'er the grass, for much he mused 
Though rarely spoke; in ample robes was used 
Reserved to walk. A long slow summer dawn, 
His youth had stretched beyond the usual bound; 
Most men arc fathers ere his heart had found 
Preluding stir, desire that to be born 
Grows urgent. Now one afternoon he went 
To sigh out in lone fields the sadness pent 
By the day's toil ; for they had been his friends 
Who were his parents. Age at times descends 
As youth to fill her place grows ripe when, though 
Offices be mutually transferred, yet no 
Breach ever yawns, though he tend who was tended. 
[239] 



POETRY:, vY Magazine of Vtrse 

Fresh start they never made, since nothing ended, 
Till even the last parting had proved kind. 
And, underneath a sycamore reclined. 
Isaac thought of them till he ceased to think; 
For all the cordial stillness of the weather 
Had passed into his soul, and, link by link. 
Had melted sorrow's chain. Attuned together. 
The fields, the trees, the dipping dales and tops 
Russet and mellow with their ripening crops. 
The far-off stretches where ridi aliens dwelt. 
The sky's vast peace, worked through him tilt he felt 
So happy that he laughed there to himself — 
A governed laugh of sound uncager health, 
The warm content of everj- wholesome limb. 
Then, when at sundown hints were borne to biro 
Of tinkling camel-bells and dogs that barked, 
He backed his ear with hollow hand and harked. 
Saying, "A coming of much folk is clear!" — 
Rising, " 'Tis from the north-east that they nearl" — 
Then smiled : for all at once his mind awoke ; 
With bliss poured in, as red wine brims a cup. 
Swam richly round, conceiving beauty's charm. 
The presence of a person sooth as balm 
Perpetual in his tent. So he walked on 
To meet them with wild heart. Shapes wound anon 
Up from the vale, where deepened more and more 
The phantom dusk. 'Twas Eliezer sate 
The foremost camel; but the next in state 

[240] 




Isaac and Rrbekak 



Surpassed all others; to her whom it bore 

The trusty steward, questioned, prompt replied; 

She veiled herself forthwith. Holding his side. 

Isaac was forced to stop ; and they stopped then, 

While down she lighted 'mong the serving-men, 

Who parted ; and half-running forth she came. 

Surely, though soft, a new voice called his name? 

He waited to make sure. She was so young. . . . 

But lo! her veil hung in her way; his tongue 

Seemed tied; she tripped, tripped, stumbled, fell — 

Was touching to the earth her brow in sign 

She owned him lord. Mute at portent malign 

He sobbed, ran, raised, and saw her face — a boon 

For utter wonder. She was very fair, 

And seemed but frail to carry so much hair; 

Strung pearls, looped round her brow by tens and twelvi 

From tapping soft-brown temples scarce had ceased ; 

Her eyes abashed looked up despite themselves — 

They did so long to see ; and were so pleased, 

Seeing, to rest on him. He did not kiss; 

She kissed him — curbed the impulse, forward rushed 

And gasped, while he blushed even as she blushed ; 

For thought grew purple with conceiving his 

Strange backwardness to kiss. Suffered to doubt. 

Hangs she in two minds or to cry or pout? 

There is not time ; their lips are mutually met, 

Till laughter part both radiant faces wet ; 

Since joy rohs ^icf of (cars, has all and wants more ]( 

[241] 



I 



POETRY: A Ma§mzime of Verse 

At length he found that his held both her hfltds. 
Straight to be wonhipped — gently im oo th fd of dmt. 
For she had toiled them falling. Who would tfamst 
On such abforption ? Eliezer stands 
And waits till diey are qwckkss; then is heard. 
But hardly listened to, though, duties said. 
He has commenced his tale — st opped, when a word 
The first time uttered turned his master's head 
With'^Ah?— Rebekah? Is thy name so sweet? 
Methinks I heard it broken at my feet. 
Stooping to raise thee? Pieced again at last, 
HTwas slow in coming; for it came too fast. 
Even as thou didst, late to come to me. . . • 
Vet am I grown ? .... for such felicity 
I feel still childish.'' Thus, with many a break 
Toward the roused tents, they, through the gloaming, make ; 
llie steward telb his tale, is questioned now, 
And oft ignored before the time allow 
A perfect answer. So to Sarah's tent 
They came, though stopping all the way they went 

She was inside; he had not longed for thb 
And yet it seemed to pass the bounds of bliss ; 
Enraptured he could neither act nor think. 
But the whole weary journey forced her sink 
Upon a camel's saddle draped with skins, 
All of a heap— bead-work and quilted things 
Bunched up about her languid form, her head 

[242] 



Isaac and Rtbekah 



Seeking with droop and loll a needed bed. 
Two heav7 lids had shut him from her eyes, 
But one hand warm in his kept paradise 
About her spirit, while the novel scent 
Of new surroundings nourished its content. 
Her nurse saw now and understood her case; 
Calling for water, which his hand-maids brought, 
Softly she bathed the almost sleeping face. 
Isaac, by this made capable of thought, 
Ordered the daintiest feast his stores could yield ; 
Sent for soft cushions, built a pillow throne 
Before which, all devotion, down he kneeled, 
Pressing choice morsels to her drowsy lips, 
Wooing their toil as rivals of his own; 
Or in the pure milk dipped her finger-tips 
To please himself, which pleased her most of all. 
But still the head would obstinately fall, 
Fain of those pillows. So her nurse must plead 
That sleep, not food, is now the crying need. 
Like one who doth receive unlooked-for gift, 
While friends uncord it, situ, and cannot lift 
Finger to help them — he, whose full veins beat. 
Whose eyes swim, kneels, while care uncases feet, 
Plunges them in a basin of bright gold, 
Despite their timid shrinking from the cold. 
His worship of their beauty freed the tongue 
Of the old crone, as she the towels wrung, 
To tell how at a stream that morning they 

t2«] 



POETRY: rf Mufazime 0/ Ftnc 

Had hslied, when, bf pantol gncothzdnl. 

Her mUtroi triced to wiadinp some ihon way 

To where, mppoRcd bjr cadi arm, the wa;(led 

Over worn hununocked rock. "PixtU Sooted with san 

She lingered at — for pleasure, paced alooe; 

But oui flew, like a Karcd bird, cither hand 

Soon aa her toes encountered the Icaat stone, 

With 'All! Oh!' frightened — lauding at her fear 

To find help »iill so opportunely near. 

A special toilet afterward went through 

To please thee — please hrr, all that we could do 

Mi^t barely that, my brd ; the water failed 

And, for it would distort her, was assailed 

With numberless rebukes, half-laughing things 

Which wed the rippling mischief that it sings." 

All thij, as flowers the dew, he mute receives; 

Watches Hlhe arms glide forth from quilted slee%-es. 

Watche* two women lift her up and hold 

Her off the ground while, broidcrcd fold on fold. 

Rich skirts creep down the whitc-stoled tender form, 

Till her feet droop above an emptied nest 

An some young almost mother bird's, whose rest 

Oeicrts her there, till she can lay her eggs. 

She hovers just above with pendnnt legs 

Until her time be come, and will not stray; 

Thus speakingly suspended those feet sway 

Hclplesily there. Then at his breast he caught; 

TTiey moved her as a corpse is moved, he thought. 

[2+tl 




Straight, as by fresh disaster overtaken, 

He sees her tresses, from their pearled net shaken. 

Come tumbling forth in downy deluge black. 

A bed had been preparing at the back; 
Beyond the region of the lamp's warm glow, 
Whispering maids glid dimly to and fro; 
Till, called at last, they round their mistress bent, 
Then bore her o'er hush carpets through the tent. 
And gave her leave to sleep "long as she could". 
Laughed and withdrew to share the dainty food. 
Isaac sat long on through the night, aloof 
From the rich bed where that soft breather slept. 
Though she was near him, under the same roof, 
He like a bodiless soul one station kept: 
External things usurped him through and through; 
His lips burned not to kiss, his voice to woo. 
Nor for a great embrace did his arms ache; 
Sheer bliss retained only his eyes awake, 
Only his ears alert, only this thought, 
Which could to clearness by no means be brought — • 1 
How, weighed with his good fortune, he was naught. 



Ah I wakes she ? Nay, but in her slumber speaks ; 
For badt in Haran, gladdening friends, her mind 

[245] 



POETRY: ,/ Af^ja 



./ y. 



Goes ihrough its smiling kingdom like a quctn, 
Bniowing praise and Hnding all things well. 
At even, now, wends staidly down to draw 
1'he water duly; and perchance, these words 
Confused beyond his skill, once blessed the ear 
Of faithful Eliezer — smiled she thus? 
Ah, time goes fast with her, if it be so! 
For now at last her words are audible: 
" 'Thou art our sister, be thou mother fair 
Unto a thousand million!" — so they said." 
She smiles, "O nurse! and it may be 1 shall!" 
With that appears content and journeys on — 
And happy journeys doubtless — all the way 
A second time from Haran thitherward. 



He knelt enraptured at so gracious sign. 
Lay there no wonder here? — this virgin come 
So far and trustfully for his content ? 
From inward question, overwhelmed, he ceased. 
Yet marvelled in believing — borne to awe, 
Yearned, stranded on that utmost shore of thou^t. 
Half-drowned, thus, some exhausted seaman (late 
Sport of proud crests on the high-running sea) 
Scans long, with still bleared eyes, deep-wooded slopes 
Close-folded up at dusk, where ocean ends. 
So his mind fed not yet, but gazed and gazed, 
By slow degrees assured of what it saw 
!*ie curled together, hugging ease. Rich forms, 

[246] 



Isaac and Rtbtkak 

Prepared for motherhood and ready now, 
Wait 'neath warm wraps, as under snow the glebe, 
Lowly and safe. She lies with face laid soft 
To nest in both her hands, which hollow down 
The pillow, while her hair mingles with night; — 
One darkness, one deep odor, one repose 
Divine with promise. Evenly breathe her lips: 
Her face set to cleave the euH of sleep. 
As on tense rigid wings the kite high up 
Holds its own way through limitless blue noon. 
To watch her silent progress through an hour. 
Real, yet a vision, drew him through flown days 
And sucked him down like a grown plant shrunk back -^ 
Within its earliest compass green and fresh- 
Till, in his brooding trance diminished, he. 
Transformed into a lightsome child once more, 
Found native just that way of settling down 
To slumber which her weary limbs re-found. 
Yet not to sleep; to hide is thus crouched low, 
Ishmael bidding him. They are alone, 
Strayed from the tents in bright discovery 
Of common things and neighbor banks and trees. 
He then, as bidden, 'neath a boulder curled. 
Watches his elder, planted firm, await, 
On sturdy legs among stout thistle-dumps, 
A goat that butts full tilt — and all too weak 
For such suspense, loses the feel of it. 
Ishmael, triumphant, "Not afraid?" had laughed. 

[247] 



POETRY: J Afoparii., =/ y,r,. 

Himself then smiled, from absence coming back ; 

Nor tried to explain why he was found so caJm. 

Again, shrunk up with fear, bound hand and foot. 

Upon an altar laid at noon, he nches; 

A knife arrests its plunge — so long that fear 

Escapes him ; thus lies on in sweet content, 

Even as she does, till [he angel-voice 

Cries "Abraham, Abraham!" bringing him his soul 

Truant, as seemed, a long while — strange with awe. 

The servants laugh outside; his dreams disperse; 

But still he kneels spell-bound beside the bed 

His need of prayer frustrating utterance. 

Yet, sensible what stars watch oe'r the tent, 

Silence and stillness g:ive him strength to feel 

His babyhood and boyhood, manhood, one 

With her to be possessed soon, with his bride. 

In attitude, relation and resource 

One under heaven, one in peace and hope. 

He knows his father's wealth lies round him safe; 

His mother's life had used this furniture; 

Unto his offspring for unnumbered years 

These pastures, wells and pleasant distances 

Are pledged by Elohim. It seems enough : 

His spirit feels indeed — too much, too much] 



A joyous wedding theirs in the old days; 
No stint of cheer ; to welcome limit none. 
Yet tardily the promise worked for them: 

[248] 



Isaac and Rfbfknk 



Rcbckah waited long crc she grew great, 

Then went with twins who strove within her womb. 

Made anxious thus, enquiring of the Lord, 

To her was straight returned, for comfort, this: 

"Two nations are within thy womb, and from 

Thy bowels shall two peoples separate : 

The one people shall be stronger than the other. 

And the elder he shall serve the younger brother." 

Now when the day of her deliverance was, 

Red and all over as an hairy coat 

Forth came the first child: "Esau" called they him 

But since hU brother grasped him by the heel 

As he came forth the second, him they named 

■■Jacob", for that he held him by the heel. 

Her women had much mirth to witness it. 

Bringing the sturdy boys for her to see, 

When eased of pain, yea, merry were their hearts 

Yet more; for that meet mother fears her babes 

And shrinks from having them laid close to her. 

So timid she. But when the younger yearns 

And stretches both precocious greedy hands 

Towards the fairest face yet seen, him swift 

She takes, and holds henceforward next her heart. 

For thus her soul had taken bent to love 

Those who lay claim to service, but to dread 

Those who in self-reliance ask for naught — 

Even since, a child, she first had wended out 

At herding-tinie, down to the village well, 

[249] 




POETRY: A Magazine of Verse 

Holding her mother's hand ; had picked her way 
(Warned to avoid the puddles, dioke of shoes 
Silk-broidered by maternal love and pride) 
And seen the poorer diildrcn splash and wade. 
And not been bold, and learned no daring ways. 
But bad grown patient, sage, a nurse of dolls: 
Who, late at length, was Jacob's fond, fond nurse 
But could not love her hardy Esau so. 

Tlius those whose life was peace, gave birdi to strife. 
Out of the meek came greed, and by content 
Were clamoring nations reared to age-long war. 

T. Sturge Moore 



[250] 



EDITORIAL COMMENT 



NEW BANNERS 




IHAT are * 



with war — all these wars 
and rumors of wars which absorb man's in- 
terests and energies, waste his treasure, and 
interrupt his proper modern business — the 
business of making a more habitable world, 
c beautiful and noble men and women to live in it? 
What are we to do with this stupid and violent interruption, 
which fills our eyes with ruin, our ears with noise, our nostrils 
with sickening stenclies, and our minds with pompous and 
brutal melodrama? War which, as it destroys and maims 
and kills, is in no other detail so disgusting as in its mon- 
strous pretense of heroism. Heroism! — the big bully merely 
shows us how many heroes we have by destroying them; 
merely brings out tragic evidence of the heroism which 
existed in its victims before the guns mangled them, heroism 
which should have been preserved for the slow struggles of 
peace. 

"Europe will be born again through this war" — thus I 
have heard people rhapsodize; "she will rise purified and 
illutnined" — etc., etc., in minute detail. Ah, when the arti- 
ficial stimulus ceases that produced all the bitter rapture and 
agony, will not men and nations have to resume their old 
tasks, their old lives, but with heavier burdens to carry, and 
under harsher conditions than before? As Bernard S haw's 
r hero says in O'Flaktrly. V. C: 
[251] 




POETRY: ^ Magazine of Vtrtt 

I lec no gTCBl "differ" myaelt. Ifi all ihe fight and ihe e 
mcDi, and when (hsi quieia down ihcy'll go back to their natural 
devilment and be the same as evci. 

Or, as Gaudier-Brzcska, the young French sculptor of 
genius who died in the trenches, said more nobly: 

With all the denrunion thai warki around ui, nothing U changed, 
even superficially. Life is the same strength, the moving agent that 
permits the small individual to assert himself. 

The bursting shetli, the volleys, vrire-entanglemenii, projector*, 
motors — the chaos of battle— do not alter in the least the outlbca 
of the hill ne are besieging, tl would be lolly to leek artistic 
emotions amid these little works of ours — ihi« paltry mechaaittn 
which serves as a purge to over-numerous humanity. 

So there is more joy in heaven over one little sweat-«hop 
sewing girl who rebels than over ninety-and-ninc V. C.'s won 
at the point at a bayonet. And there is more hope for 
humanity in the present very definite movement for increase 
of beauty and joy in our lives, than in the triumphant march 
of a thousand armies. 

One conspicuous phase of this movement — the many-sided 
struggle to abolish poverty — may not be in Poetry's prov- 
ince; but another phase, the impulse toward civic beauty, is 
the beginning of a richer life in this country which will 
bring a renaissance of all the arta. Therefore the sense of 
joy, of spiritual expansion, which came to me during a 
recent visit, one fine summer Sunday, to Chicago's new 
Municipal Recreation Pier, seemed to bear a direct relation 
to Poetry. Here, in this beautiful assemblage of vast halls 
and towers, out-door courts and colonnades, reaching out 
into the cool blue lake as a spacious refuge from dust and 
heat, from toil and struggle and ugliness — here was the proof 

[252] 



New Banners 



of a new movement in our democracy, proof that the people 
are beginning to express in definite, concrete form their 
demand for beauty. 

In other cities I should have found other motives for 
this train of thought; even in Chicago I might have taken 
my text from the long chain of playground parks, or the new 
architectural framirg-in of Grant Park, both prophetic of 
the future beauty of one of the great cities of the world. 
Everywhere the public impulse toward city planning, toward 
more open spaces and park areas, more free music and dancing, 
more masques, pageants, expositions, and other festivals of 
peace — all this is part of the real forward march of modern 
armies, the real struggle of our time toward the light. 

The organization of society for rapid, effective and beau- 
tiful movement in peace, as hitherto it has frequently been 
organized for such movement in war — that is the modern 
problem, a problem worth the devotion of our best minds, 
our richest treasure. Such devotion will destroy war at 
last by stripping it of its ancient glamour. Men live by 
dreams, by the ever elusive dream of beauty. Give them 
dreams more beautiful and heroic than their long-cherished 
vision of the glory of war, and they will put away war like a 
worn-out garment, and unite for conquests really glorious, for 
the advance toward justice and beauty in the brotherhood 
of nations. H. M. 



[253] 



POETRY: ^ Matatime of Vtrse 



COUUSTONDBNCES 

The annoyance of being forever coupled with something 
or somebody that has gone before, is a part of the srtut's 
reward for creating something worth while; one is never 
curious about the ancestry of mciiiocrit>*. And yet ir is in- 
evitable that a work of genius should start a train of asso- 
ciations. The mind instinctively searches for the thing that 
is "like": a function that is in itself creative is only set in 
motion by an active, creative source; that deaih which is 
mediocrity is incapable of imparting any such impetus. And 
this is one reason why one never cares to trace the parentage 
of bad work ; in fact it has no lineage. As 1 once heard a 
painter say : "Good pictures are alike ; only the bad ones arc 
different." Certainly this is equally true of poetry, irre- 
spective of all distinctions of "school," creed, or form. 

Vet the novelty of work truly creative alwa>-s excites sus- 
picion — the suspicion that it must have been taken from some- 
where, or copied from something! In tlie search for corre- 
spondences, one is too apt to trace exact sources, to apply the 
epithet "derivative" to work which has been done quite 
independently of all knowledge of that from which it is 
supposed lo be derived. The over-zealous critic who insists 
uptjn this method of pigeon-hoUng needs to be told that the 
creative mind h creative: it has no need of a cupy-book; 
it does not need to stem directly from this or that influence. 
Artistic achievements may be as accidental, and as independ- 
ent, as scientific discoveries. At least the seed from which the 
flower blossomed was not sown overnight. 
[254] 



Correipandrneei 

On the other hand, this constant reiteration of influences 
and correspondences should not annoy the artist overmuch. 
He must remember, even though he be given fifty-seven 
different varieties of forebears, that there is a long tradition 
to the effect ifiat the poet or artist is "myriad-minded." He 
must in all truth, be a complex, rather than a simple, creature, 
and it is not at all surprising that he should shelter many 
diverse spirits under the cloak of an inclusive personality. 

A. a H. 

REVIEWS 



TWO AKTHOLOGIBS 

Some Imagitt Poets: igi6. Houghton Mlffiin Co. 
Georgian Poetry: ipij-tgts. Poetry Bookshop, London; 

and Putnam, New York. 

If we could only forget schools and labels now and then, 
and assume an Olympian attitude toward modem poetry, 
the superior attitude of the high gods who look before and 
alter, and who inhale beautiful words as eagerly as the 
scent of flowers — beautiful words, and fleet emotions which 
outrun the words, or sail up and away! What would the 
gods find in these two books — what keen and perfumed air? 

It does not make much difference what instrument a son 
of the gods sings to, so long as it (its his song. He may cut his 
own reed by the river, or find an old violin in a junk-shop, 
or play the church organ, or pound the bass-drum, or whisper 
through the elusive piccolo — anything so long as he chooses 
1255] 



J 



POETRY: J MMt"'" •/ l'rr,t 

inc ripit voooA Tof DK liucuipg <v I rjp i n g or oAiicing wunbt 
tfac ri^t iDtuic for the fcding dnt ootnios than. Or, in 
the words of the late Rem^ Ac Gounnont, a pmput of the 
sjmMifttr. tnmlitcd in the prefan of Samr I 



The nic exone «Udi ■ ana can bar* int wridng b » wiii* 
down hifB*cIf, M navcil f«« ccbcn ihc wtt of world wUdi lairTvn 
itKll in U* iadindMal sjaw. ... He ikowld create U« own 
aeidirtici: ind we ihoirfd idaui •■ maar aesdiMKi a* ihere art 
origiDil mind*, and jadge ihoa for wkai Act are and dM for what 

H thcK tHo books represent two tendencies in modtm 
poetii" — the cxinserrative and the h~beral — ihey do not include 
cither the extreme radicals on the one side or the extrane 
formalists on the other. If the imagists are less elliptical 
than the "choric school." the "specirists," etc, the Georgians 
ait less rheton'cal than the Victorians. And in both volumes 
one finds now and then some poet creating, if not quite "his 
owTi aesthetics," at least his own mode, his own personal 
magic. 

1 find this — to mention two extreme instances — not only 
in H, D.'s lithe nude lyric, The Shriar, so wonderful in 
its bright stark purit}-; but alw, to a certain degree, in 
Gordon Bottomley's brief tragedy. King Lear's H'ife, which 
marches in Elizabethan draperies. H, D., using a new man- 
ner with perfect virtuosity, perhaps succeeds in "creating 
her own aesthetics". Throughout her group there Is, in her 
feeling for sand-dunes and rocky sea-swept headlands a com- 
pleteness of sympathy which reminds one of Emil)' Bronte's 
Inve of the moors. She is not outside of them bui a part 
of them, a spirit informing them; wild and free nnd fleet. 
[256] 



Ttvo Anlkalofia 

like some nymph nf long ago. And her art is the fit vesture 
of her spirit; it falls in straight sculptural lines, like the 
drapery of certain archaic statues. The Shrinr tells the 
formidable allure of beauty as the very winds and wuva 
might tell it: 



You I 






And Ihe wbd sound* with ihU 
And the Bca, 

Where rollers ihor with blue 
Cut under deeper blue. 




Honey it not more «wcei 

Than the iilr stretch of your beach. 

Mr. Bottomley uses an instrument more fi 
he strikes it in his own way, and forces us to con- 
fess at last that he has achieved the impossible by setting 
up beside Shakespeare's figure of Goneril a darkly vivid por- 
trait of that sinister princess in youth. And in doing this 
with all the old aidS of the tragic muse — a stately long-ac- 
cepted measure, an ancient legendary tale and scene, royal 
characters and violent deeds — he yet plays the rich old instru- 
ment for his own purposes, achieves his own personal style. 

If these are cases in which the special magic is achieved, 
one finds in both volumes more than one instance of too 
self-conscious experiment, which, however interesting, still 
retains signs of effort, remains a study rather than a poeni. 
A conspicuous example among the radicals is Miss Low 
[257] 



POETRY: A MafM%imr •/ f rrjr 

much ulkaf^f riapaoiy in palyphooic prose, Sprimf Day, 
whott brightly coloml pzttcm of intrrwoTco ihjrifafis, 
ttt with glittering rhtmcs, acfatn-cs an admirabk vimiouty, 
if jrou will, but not quite the authentic nape of p er f ect 
art. And at the other end o( the scale. LsKrUo Aber- 
crombie's two-act play. The EmJ •/ ike fforU, is a too de- 
liberate eilort to adjust the talk of modem peasants to 
blank vcne, higfa-flovrn poetic language, ntiloqtnes, artd ocber 
trappings more or less artificial and uncaaTindng. 

If we go through the two andiologies in search of tlie 
achieved personal style, the special magic, w^ierc shall we 
pause? 

The imagist volume perhaps tempts us tirsi, because these 
poeb have stript off many old impedimenta. They are at 
least more simple and direct in presentation than the Geor- 
gians, and their cadenced ihythms are less bound by metrical 
rules. Of (hem all, H. D. is no doubt the perfect imagst, 
the only danger which besets her ^tark st>-le being that which 
auaib all perfection — the danger of becoming too keen and 
cold, too abstract, too inhuman. John Gould Fletcher has 
more warmth, though he also is always the artist. Sensitive, 
vibrant, aware of strange colors in nature, and of the wiM- 
neM of humanity against them, he finds in Arizona, our won- 
derland, a congenial subject. In the work of D. H. Law- 
rence one feels always an abiding sorrow, an agony of sj'ro- 
paihy with suffering men and women expressed in low, far- 
sounding music, as of wood-winds. No one has felt each 
bitter wound of this war more cruelly than he, no one has 
touched the subject with more tragic beauty than he in 
[258] 



Ttvo Anikologtrs 

Erinnyrs. And Amy Lowell gives us a beautifully patterned 
poem in Patterns, a finely composed decorative picture, rich 
in color, and rhythmic in its handling of background and 
draperies, so to speak, its movement of repeated lines, around 
a tittle eighteenth-century figure whose passion is held by 
the poet admirably in tone. Richard Aldington has two or 
three fine poems, especially the filmy rhymed lyric, After 
Two Years, but nothing so bewitching as Lesbia. Nor is 
F, S. Flint quite at his best. 

Of the Georgians — we find Rupert Brooke in his most 
high-spirited mood of joy, reaching its climax in the immortal 
sonnet, The Soldier, now so much quoted that people forget 
it was first printed in Poetry. We find Walter de la Marc 
attaining, in Full Moon and Off the Ground, almost the 
gaiety and intangible grace of certain earlier poems. And 
William H. Davics, in The Moon. Thunderstorms and 
Sweet Stajz-tit-Hoinr, gives us that kind of eighteenth -cen- 
tury clarity and grace, more like Goldsmith than anyone 
else, which distinguishes his best work. In the group of 
James Stephens is one poignant little masterpiece. Dierdre. 

John Masefield is represented by The IVanderer, one of 
the best of his briefer narratives of ships and the sea, done 
in sounding quatrains of long eloquent lines. And another 
poet who swings all the old conventions with the strength 
of an athlete and the skill of an adept^Ralph Hodgson — ap- 
pears with the two poems which have made him famous, 
The Bull and The Song of Honor. 

Students of modern poetry will require both these books. 
H. M. 
[259] 



POETRY: A Magazine of ^trse 

NEW BOOKS OF VERSB 

Caden(ei, by F. S. Flint. The Poetry Book-«l>op, London. 

On first going over this beautifully printed little volume 
I asked myself, was this all Mr. Flint had to sa}? But 
after reading it again and again, I found that he had much 
to say — much that was worth saying. 

There is an unsensationat artistic courage in almost the 
whole book which can hardly be overpraised. The poet 
faces his heart, his soul, and his mood. He faces one or 
the other in Chryfanthemumi, in Fragment, in To a fP'omoH, 
and in the beautiful and rhapsodic The Star. 

In Malady, the author has achieved vision. It ts a faith- 
ful rendering of a vision : done with artistic refinement and 
economy. 1 believe it will rank with the better work of 
the sensual-visionists — Cezanne, Brancusi, etc., in the pres- 
ent renaissance. 

Not everything in the book is artistically satisfactory. 
Beautiful as The Su/an is, it is nevertheless tainted with a 
slight affectation — an unconscious imitation of the French 
symbolists. This is more true of Rotes, and less of London. 
1 believe that even in Afcident Mr. Flint does not speak 
freely in his own voice. "You see beyond us and you sec 
nothing" really means, "You look at me and pretend not 
to see me." And part of April is not convincing — "The 
roots hear and they quiver," etc. I have an impression also 
that the pessimistically-toned poems, with the exception of 
Regret, arc not quite sincere; which of course docs not mean 

[260] 



Nnvt 



'ois of Vent 



that Mr. Flint may not be a sincere pessimist outside of 
his poems. 

Taken as a whole this poet's gift of artistic caurage clothed 
in beauty wins him a place near Pound, H. D., Aldington 
and Fletcher. It will help build the poetry of the future, to 
which Masters has brought his gift of fire, Sandburg that 
of social vision and protest, and Amy Lowell the important 
gift of strong color — yes, of gaudiness. 1 believe that the 
art of the future, including poetry, will be simple, fresh, and 
strongly colored; and will be understood and loved by the 
ignorant as well as by the most cultivated. It will be a 
popular art in the finest sense of the word. 

I am afraid 1 have not implied sufficiently how much I 
like most of the poems in the little volume. But most of the 
reviews of imagisls' books by sympathizers have been so 
one-sided that one is inclined to emphasize the other side 
for a change. 

The readers of Poetry are of course familiar with many 
of Mr. Flint's poems. Here is a new one — Mthdy — in 
which the slight vagueness actually helps the poem, as it 



iter's deep emotion: 

I ruDking melody of my love, 



emphasises the v 

1 » 

Knnv 

A nightingale — 

In (he dead itillneis of the night 

Among the apple boughs. 

I wa« making melody of my love, 
Even though the organ of my voice 
Could scarcely follow. 
Yet ii wa> melody 
Thai leaped and soared, 
Gliding from note lo tioie. 

[261] 



<pd«- — • 




[262) 




New Boots of Verse 



to stop short of the rigor of style, which in art is essential- 
One quarrels with him. because, having in a few instances 
obeyed the sterner demands of style, he is content far too 
often with a triteness of word, of rhyme, of rhythm, and 
even of thought, that gives to his lines the effect of jogging 
along in the manner of what is quaintly known as "society 



Wa 



he lamp gives a loftened glow ihat is like a caress, 
And ihc tire gltama cozy and red in ihc open graic, 
'arming your bosoin and neck and your shiminenng drus; 
And ihe people begin lo arrive, for it's five to eight. 



I'm not very near you at dinner— il wouldn't be wise. 

And so he goes on to "eyes", and then ducting to the 
horse, and flapping the reins a little, he reaches the end of 
the third quatrain, and calls the three Dinner Time. 

Now that is as bad as any, though not so satirically clever 
as some, or so graceful as others; but its faults, I think, are 
too prevalent in the work of a poet who, in a more expensive 
effort, tells us he has "the moon under his arm". He should 
harness, then, to the horses of the moon or of some proud 
sphere, that he may give more often that sense of restraint, 
of curb, as of skill in league with impetuousness. This 
greater elegance, this austerity in company with grace, exists 
in the lovely poem, Calte Alrmn O Loredan, which repre- 
sents Mr. Goldring in the Catholic Anthology, and which 1 
should like to quote here, had it not already appeared in 
Poetry. And there are traits in other poems, tuo, that make 
one resent keenly the less distinguished aspects of his verse. 
Dorothy Dudley 

[263] 



POETRY: A M«f»%im, ./ Vtrt* 

Tkf MidJU MUn amd Oiker Pitrmt. h, ha Wiboo 

Yale University Ptem. 

Thb book of quicT poems has a oerain grace and dunn. 

Jti nft mucic conveys the wliloquies, the patterned medita* 

It, of S man tcnuiive <o the more dclicale aspects of 

I cooiedy aad pathos. Neither the tragic nor the coouc is 

y %tn, but the smQe and the sigh are sincrre, and the voice has 

m nraet Rnnance. The poet's li^t toudt, his iitdirtdual 

' mty of Mjing things, and his soise of the pcnncztiiig and 

undCTlying humor of this earthly scfaanc, make him a pod 

aimpanioa. 

His subjects arc varied, but nearly all are cfaosco irom 
modern life. Even AJatlrt drourt'i CompUint is twt only a 
vivid sketch of Voltaire — as his own father sees him — but 
suggestive of many another waj'ward son of pnius who 



Thr Lament of a Srw England Art Student, MireiU 
Dances, U'as It a Leaf* and others are also studies of 
tccnperament ; the war brings out a few protests, and » num- 
ber of poems, especially The Temple, probe into the mys- 
tery of life. Indoor poems all, no doubt; pormt of "a 
scholar and a gentleman," but a real man nevertheless. 

The book sutlers from a hclier-skcIter suoressioa of sub- 
jects, and a confusing arrangement of page-headings, thou^ 
certain details of make-up, especially the paper co^'cr, are in 
excellent taste. Some of its best poems are familiar to onr 
readers. Here is a new one, Night Armies: 



[264] 



Nfw Booh of Vrrte 



The gutteri run lurchargeit. All nighl 
I heard war-chatiot» twcep ihe plain 



No battle nreck, no littered pUi 
Where do wild nighl-srmiei flee?- 

The itreet i* gray with raio. 
And down (he s 

Ponder 



ind I t< 



H. M. 

yThf Jew to Jtius and Other Poems, by Florence Kiper 
Franlc. Mitchell Kcnnerlcy. 

With this modern Jewess intense vitality and passionate 
onviction demand utterance in a kind of solemn chant, 
IS with some of the ancient prophetesses of her race. She 
was born too iate tor Deborah's heroic simplicity of mood and 
divine splendor of lyricism, but something of Deborah's 



spin 



1 her. 



The book is largely juvenilia, and even the best things 
re remarkable for their promise of power than 
fr for what they actually achieve. One feels the drive of a 
I big nature in them, of a passion (or beauty and justice which 
I forces the muses' citadel, and rebukes them for idling, and 
I lays violent hands on their banners. The poet's fervor be- 
Icomes really lyric in triumphant moments; again, when the 
■ipowcr wanes, it spends itself tn more or less rhythmic 
[eloquence. 

The well-known sonnet, The Jew to Jesus, published six 
eight years ago in The Century, is a tender expression of 
[265] 



romv: 4 Mtt^tk 



• / V' 



iabDn ndal gmpiA ia. Aa4 Tht Smtf af air j 
Otf tf litft BuiUiMfi. Wt H«cv D*m Him i 

ate equally fcrvoit expnamaa^ at w 
perhipi Tht Mwiet. Yoa and yi»fcf — rf s> 
fiorjj tempered poon*. The last eodt thai: 
OmmI Clawi! Wk« an ixF A AiM^ I 
Tbt ibe wi»di of it« wofld will ^Mhn. Vc 
Oat nob src MMrue. Oh, ■* a tittle bracae 
W« i*sU U«« iM ihe ^ffcwM. Sbdm «e fna VKC 
The Bigfct M nv vaat a pUcc ! 

//. Jf . 
Tt^daj and Tomwr^tt; bf Cbuies Huboo Townt i 
H. Drjrxn Co. 

A letter from ibe pubUchcn calk thb book " 
fourufly wortby Anxrican venc on mo^ra nainr d 

Of ca*int (he author ia oof rcspoodUc for I 

phia»e, but be b in danger of falling into Uw witli t 

noticeable in much magazine rcrK. which ii describe* i 

unoomdoutly delightful accuracr. With » 

a vaood of jouth, or of a certain »iagc of experience i 

emotion — a nwxid which passes. Surely Mr. Xm 

touched it in Bejond the Stars, and in the present Tolin 

we have evidence of it in Afjiteriri, Johmnj f'alemtine i 

one or two otheri. He may reach it again — there b alw 

a chance that wnne new experience will bring it back, < 

thougli mott of theie poems are too "wundly uurthy". 

The brief lyric Afirr is peihapc one of the hot: 

Drciichid, adrr tain. 

The lilaca tremble again 

Jo The cimjI wiiiil, and pour 

Thrir frigcance round an dnot. 

[266] 



Nav Boots of Vmr 



Crushed, when Love die- 
Bravely ber ipirit c 



H. M. 

The Nameiest One, by Anne Cleveland Cheney. Frederick 
A. Stokes Co.. New York. 

How should a modern poet write a sixteenth-century 
tragedy? Of course it is possible to say "Don't!" like 
Punch TO certain other adventurers. But that advice would 
not he final — there should be a way. 

Of one thing, however, I feel sure: it should not be 
written in a futile imitation of Elizabethan English, like 
this: 

Beshrevr mc now, a-gadding it must go, 
To ace a limb o' Saian in hii cell. 
Whatever hap;— the evil eye (o "em sill 
I'll to my buainesB— dangle an' who may I 

Such a diction artificializes whatever it tries to express. 
The truest, most dramatic story could never be convincing 
in it. H. M. 

THE SPIRIT OF '76 IN POETRY 

The Spirit of the American Revolution, as Revealed in the 
Poetry of the Period, by Samuel White Patterson, A. M., 
Ph. D. Richard G. Badger. 
This is an excellent study and compilation of American 

verse from 1760 to 178^. beginning with Philip Freneau. 

It was a period which produced full-grown patriots, but its 

poets were extremely sophomoric. 
(267] 




CORRESPONDENCE 



DEAD lusH met 




Dear Editor: As a friend of each of tbc three poets who 

were executed in Dublin, I ^uld like to thank, throucfa 
you, the pocis of America for the demonstration of sym- 
pathy and protest they made in Central Park, New- Yoik, on 
the afternoon of 28th June. Particularly I should like to 
thank Mr. Klarkham who presided, Mr. George Sterling 
and yourself for clear messages of sympathy, &Ir. Joyce 
Kilmer and Miss Margaret Widdemer, who spoke and read 
poems for the occasion, and especially Mr. Lous Untcr- 
mej'CT, who read a very powerful poem of protest. 

The three po^ who were shot in Dublin in May were 
of the clan of Byron and Shelley and Walt WTiitman — they 
committed thnnselves to liberty even unto death. Thotnas 
M ac Dunagh , /spe akJng of his country and his country's hopes 
in a txxiir which has just been published, Literature im Ire- 
land, said : 









c poets and o 



r poets work- 
en . . . ana ii i) wen loo mil here sliJI that cium which i* 
idenii5(d, withoul uadctthought of eommerce, with the cause of 
God iDd Right and Frcrdom, the cause which is the great iheine 
of our poetrv, may any day call the poeti to give their lives in ihe 
old lei^ice. 

Irish literature, as he wrote in the same book, begins with 

humanity and nature: "Later, after the English are settled 

in our land, not humanity hut the nation, Kathleen m 

Houlihan, is our heroic theme." That is true; and no men 

t268] 




The Dead Irisk Poett 

ever handled an heroic theme more heroically than they did — 
Pearse, MacDonagh and Plunk^it. 

1 understand that my good friend Joseph Campbell is writ- 
ing you about Padraic Pearse.- So I shall say nothing here 
about him beyond sending you a translation i^ a little poem 
of his I discovered lately. It is a Cradle son^from his single 
volume, SUep Soni/s and Strrow Songs, and the translation 
is by MacDonagh. 



O little head of gold ! O candle 
Thou nilt guide all who imvel 



" \ 



Ceaie 



e black chaferi 



il O c 



e do n 



rarly, 



I, O barnaclc-goaie, going ove 

of the moimlain, thai wak 
Stir not to-night till the Biin whitens o' 

"The monotonous repetition of the one rhyme throughout," 
said MacDonagh. speaking of the original, "and the swaying 
flow of the verse, help to make this poem a perfect lullaby." 

I shall speak a little of MacDonagh and Plunkctt. 

Search, eagerness, devotedness — these are the words that 
spell out Thomas MacDonagh's spirit for me. His life was 
an eager search for something to which he could give the 
whole devotion of his being. He was a poet and a scholar, 
an eager friend, a happy-hearted companion. His dream was 
always of a lofty action. It is terrible to think that wc 
shall never see again that short figure with the scholar's 

[269] 



POETRY: ^ Magaxinr •> f I' e r , e 

brow and the dominating no^, and never listen again to A 
flow of learned, witty and Iftimorous talk. I have one deep 
regret about Mac Don a gh-jt is that he left so little in poetry 
of the happy-hearted ifiia humorous part of his nature. He 
knew popular lite in the Irish country and the Irish countrj- 
town intimately, but ho has put his feeling for popular and 
humorous life into onljr one poem quite completely, the 
unique and maaterly John-Jokn. He has left his testament 
in the poem Wishes for my Son,' addressed to his first child 
Donnachd, bom in 1912 on St, Cecilia's day. 



Freedom's wat lo knit at length, 
And 'o win, ihrough wrath and Mrife 
To the sequel of my life. 

Bui for you, so small and young, 

Born on St. Cecilia's Day, 
I in more harmonious song 

Now for nearer joys should pray— 
Simple joys: the nitural eromh 
Of your childhood and your youth, 
Courage, innocence and truth: 

These for you, so small and young 
In your hand and heart and tongue. 

When one saw Joseph Mary Phmketl for the Rrst time 
one was inclined lo think that illness had made inroads oti all 
his powers. But he had a conqueror's will. His and Mi 
Donagh's friendship was one of the finest things I know 
MacDonagh's influence brought him from the study 
affairs, continually adding to his qualities of decision 
command. The family of Joseph Marj- Plunkett had al- 
[270] 




lall 



The Ufad Irish Poels 

Eady their martyr — the vcnerahlc Oliver Plunkett, of the 
I gcvcntecnth ccnturj-, for whom a process of canonization has 
been set up in Rotne. Jiiseph Plunkett published one hook 
of verse, The Circle and the Sti-ord, and he has left die 
manuscript of another book. The poem I rtgard as our 
proudest piece of national defiance is called Oar Htritag': 
Thi> heritage to (he race of kingi: 
Their cliildren and their children's seed 
Have wrought their propheciM In deed 
Of terrible and splendid things. 

The hands ihai fought, the hearts ih«i broke 



(FU; 
s behind this 



Aad still (heir hands shall guard ihe sod 
Thai holds their faiher*' funeral urn; 
Still shall Iheir hearts volcanic burn 

With anger of the sons of God. 

No alien snord shall earn ai wage 

The entail of their blood and tears. 

No shameful price (or peaceful yean 
Shall ever pari this heritage. 

. stupid to think that the pride tliat i 
I poem can be quelled by niachine guns. 

Another Irish poet has been condemned to death but has 
not been executed — Sir Roger Casement. Casement's life 
I has been all action, but he has left a few fine poems. His 
HamiUar Barca is one of the finest sonnets I have ever 
read — it gives the figure of an unconquerable man who 
stands lonely against an empire. 

May 1 ask the sympathy of the poets of America for 
e discoverer of a great body of fine poetry. 



[271] 



^Me wfca hv c£iid mJ iiilHiJ ik 

!Py— PrafaMBf Em MxJita? Pinft wii MsKcai 
■ ffoidcM of dhr Indl Vil—i I L faK W «J la Iw 

FliflBeacc M p«r*c« the ■—iimiuii al Ebmi:. Yet 
i Id peiMl menkaie Cor He M i 

INKS KXOnr B B'^^Blly COSQ 

Lhmt >id wlftu) uutniMMOM ■ ■ BnOn preoB. nr mibc 
! for whin sbqidcy nsn. Sir Fredcnx 
I WBNa, WW moc a mnnba' of oc CUinct. vi AttDcncjc 
r GoKnl and a prBw ait of of rabck. Let ne a^ ly iiilii i 
[ .tm> for aaoAer Iridi poet and dHtnpiiAcd cnbc. Dvrdl 
\ ri0£if, wfio haA been o g p u i tt d ana iffilgwi ■> a pfisoo ^yir^ 
althou^ he bad no baml in At inmrectiaa- 

PmJn^ Cmlmm : 



It 



Podnic Pcanc, mito on &Lar Ist Ttirr his dcatb ac ifac hamk 
of a Briiisfa firing-pany, was a wriier of dktinctioa both in 
EnslNh and Gaelic. Hii Eni^ish pncMC has ■ nrrvous lO- 
tmuty of si>'le that was but an f^ifkanna, a showing- forth 
of the spirit burning within the man himself. Connacht- 
nunured, h« had a profound knoivledge of roodcm Gaelic. 
His tmhology of Gaelic poetry which appeircd srriaUy in 
the pages of The Irish RevUu>, now defunct, is the bcsti 
thing of its kind that has ytt been done. The following 
lyric, which I have translated from Suantraidkr afmi Golt- 
raidkr (SUtpSonst ond Lamrnli). 1914, hb only boot; of 
orif{inal verse, shows that he h.~.ri for a long time been in love 
with death : 

[272] 



The DraJ Irhh Furls 



A raiin I made in my heart 

For Ihe knighl. for ilic high king, 

A rann [ made for my love, 

For ihe king of kings, for old Dcaih. 



Brighter 
The dark 

The quiet 


of 


of your c 
c than the 
yuur house 


tighi of day 
ay-black house; 
nuiic of doTei 

and it» everlasting silen 










JO 


fph Cc 



NOTES 



I 



T. Slurge Moore, the disliugilished English poel, i 
tm» month in Poemv for the first time. His more recent booM oi 
verse are: Portni, Mnriamne, A Sicilian Idyll and Judith, and 
The Sea ii Kind. Duckworth is Mr. Moore's publisher in England ; 
an American edition of The Sea is Kind wai published by the 
Houghton-Mifflin Co. in 1914. 
Other poets who have not hitherto been published in the mapa- 

Mr. Clinton Josejih Masseck. Instructor In English in Washington 
Univeriity, St. Louis, has strongly influenced his students lowa(d 
appreciation of modern poetry; and a* Director of the Little Play- 
house he has been an equally progressive influence in the drama. 

Miss Amy Sebree-Sroith. of San Diego, Cal.; Miss Ruth Hall, 
of Catskill. N. Y.; and Miss Jean O'Brien, of New York but now 
resident in Habana, Cuba, have published little as yet. 

Of the poets familiar to our readers. Miss Amy Lowell, of 
Btookline. Mass., needs no introduction. Her latest book of verse, 
SvKrd Bladei and Popfy Seed, has bad several printings, and Six 
Frenth Poels will soon be in iti second edition (both published by 
Macmillan). 

Marguerite Wilkinson (Mrs. James W.) is still conduciinK the 

fioetry department of the Los Angeles Graphic, although she is no 
onger living on "the Coast." Her books of verse are: In Pivid 
Gardetu [Sherman. French Ic Co.), By a Wntern IVaysidi and 
Man: a Modern Morality Play. 

Mr. Victor Starbuck, a young lawyer of Orlando, Fla.; Mr. 

i-John Russell McCarthy, a journalist of Huntingdon, Pa,; and 

Mrs. Aoita Fitch, uf New York, have primed no volumes of verse 



[273] 



POETRY: A Masatinr t, f /'rrj« 
BOOKS RECEIVED 

OUCtH*!, VUU: 

Songi «/ a ftfram Atgtl, by F.U> Baifcn. MiidMll K«Bneri«}^ 
501// s/ ArmaffJdBn and Olhrr Fotmi, br Ccttrge *"] f iwii 

Vitrei Mitchell Kcnntrltv. 
Efittpki of Somr Dtar Dumb BtvU. b; lubel Vallc G»Aas 

PiCM. 

Tlnridaf'i Child, by Elii*beth Reodall. B. H. Blwkwtll, Ox|«rA 

Enitlind. 
Bahemian Glaii. by EMbct Lillian DuS. B. K. BUcknctL 
CtnUiti and Olhtr Pormi. by T. W. Eirp. B. H, Blackwcll. 
Tht Eicapid I'rincm and Othtr Petmi. bf W. R. CUlde. B. H. 

Blickwdl. 
PatKii 0/ Panama and Olhrr Viru, by Grargt Warhtnon Lcwt^ 

6b(fm*n. Pidieb & Co. 
Petmi, by Chcir«r Firkini, Shcrmin, Ftencb & C«. 
Flaalatian Stngi and Othtr Vtr$r, by Rutb McEncry Stuan. D. 

Applrtoti A Co. 

Tht Pipn O' Pan— a Ifotd Drtam. by Svlvla Shctnun, Ridiard G. 

Badftrr, 

uNriioLomu and t«akii.atioh9: 
/'Ar Aim* Suavt af Gioiuf Carduai. Tranitiied from the Ii 

by Liura Pullcrton Gilben. Richard G. Badger. 
.7 llarvfii «/ Gfrman Vent. Stlecied and Traoilaled by 1 

Kiretc Miintltrbctit O. Ajiplcton & Co. 
<* CelU(ii«n of Nurtetj Rhymri. Primed by C. L. F. f« ibe P 

Hookihop. 



[274] 



\0. VI 




A^ 



\\e of Verse 



Eldited by ii^irrict Monroe 

SEPTEMBER 1916 

£210 Pound 

.'\:,vr—0 Atilii*— Tite ThfDe Poew— 

1:1^— Itnprutiooa ol F. M: Arovnt 

' j-lii— IIomMc to Q. S. P, ChmtuwuK 

.n Omiiiboa d* LondrM 

Rabindraaath Tagore 
=. I-XIIl Harold Monro 

AdoK Wolff 
- T. R. Elioi 
atioa GaUnie— La Piulia che Piange— Mr. Apol- 
MncnlftK It (be Window 
Hbuniain "'''■' " , 



383 

291 
392 



296 
297 



Th« Ear.h.. l.»p-H< aroiiiih. U» Clo^Tt.lej^-n— U 
— Ecce Homo 
ptoria] Comment 

Jsmfi VV-nttomb Rilcf— Of Editoni and Poett 



305 
3» 



34ni*kb nuM&b 



I 



mtxf 

JSi fli^sasinc of Vtoe 




SEPTEMBER, 1916 

POEMS OLD AND NEW 

the'^ish and the shadow 

1 HE salmon-trout drifts in the stream, \/o 

The soul of the salmon-trom floats over the \ 6 

stream 
Like a little wafer of light. 
The salmon moves in the sun-shot, bright, 
shallow sea. 




As light as the shadow of the tish 

that falls through the water, 
She came into the large room by the stair. 
Yawning a little she came with the sleep still upon her. 

"I'm just from bed. The sleep is still in my eyes. 
Come. I have had a long dream." 



And two springs have passed us!" 
[275] 



POETRY: A Magazine of Vent 

"Not so far — no, not so far now. 

There is a place — but no one else knows it — 

A field in a valley . . . 



"quieu sui avinen 



leu lo jtff/' 



She must speak of the time 
Of Amaut de Mareuil, I thought, "quieu sui avinen. 

Light as the shadow of the fish 

That falls through the pale green water. 

^ O ATTHIS ^ 

Thy soul 
Grown delicate with satieties, 
Atthis. 

O Atthis, 
I long for thy lips. 

I long for thy narrow breasts, 
Tliou restless, ungathered. 

THE THREE POETS 

Candidia has taken a new lover 
And three poets are gone into mourning, 
TTie first has written a long elegy to "Chloris." 
To "Chloris chaste and cold," his "only Chloris". 

[276] 



The Three P^ets 

The second has written a sonnet 

upon the mutability of woman, 
And the third writes an epigram to Candidia. 

^ PAGANl'S ' 

Suddenly discovering in the eyes of the very beautiful Nor* 
mande cocotte 
The eyes of the very learned museum assistant. 

theK*ake isle 

O God, O Venus, O Mercury, patron of thieves, 
Give me in due time, I beseech you, a little tobacco-shop, 
With the little bright boxes 

piled up neatly upon the shelves 
And the loose fragrant cavendish 

and the shag, 
And the bright Virginia 

loose under the bright glass cases. 
And a pair of scales 

not too greasy. 
And the volailles dropping in for a word or two in passing, 
For a flip word, and to tidy their hair a bit. 

O God, O Venus, O Mercury, patron of thieves. 
Lend me a little tobacco-shop, 

or install me in any profession 
Save this damn'd profession of writing, 

where one needs one's brains all the time. 

[277] 



POETRY: A Magazine of Verse 

IMPRESSIONS OP PKAN9OIS-MAUB AIOUST (dB VOLTADB) 

I Phyllidula and the spoils of Gomvenut 

Where, Lady, are the days 
When you could go out in a hired hansom 
Without footmen and equipments 
And dine in a dieap restaurant? 

Phyllidula now, with your powdered Swiss footman 
Clanking the door shut, 

and lying; 
And carpets from Savonnier, and from Persia, 
And your new service at dinner. 
And plates from Germain, 

And cabinets and diests from Martin (almost lacquer). 
And your white vases from Japan, 
And the lustre of diamonds. 

Etcetera, etcetera and etcetera? 

II To Madame du Chatelet 

If you'd have me go on loving you 
Give me back the time of the thing. 

Will you give me dawn light at evening? 

Time has driven me out of the fine plaisaunces, 
Tlie parks with the swards all over dew. 
And grass going glassy with the light on it. 
The green stretches where love is and the grapes 

[278] 



Impressions of Franqois-Marie Arouet 

Hang in yellow-white and dark clusters ready for pressing. 
And if now we can't fit with our time of life 
There is not mudi but its evil left us. 

Life gives us two minutes, two seasons — 

One to be dull in ; ^ 

Two deaths — and to stop loving and being lovable, 
Tliat is the real death, 
The other is little beside it. 

Crying after the follies gone by me, 
Quiet talking is all that is left us — 
Gentle talking, not like the first talking, less lively; 
And to follow after friendship, as they call it. 
Weeping that we can follow naught else. 

Ill To Madame Lullin 

You'll wonder that an old man of eighty 
Can go on writing you verses . . . 

Grass showing under the snow. 
Birds singing late in the year! 

And Tibullus could say of his death, in his Latin ; 
"Delia, I would look on you, dying.' 

And Delia herself fading out, 
Forgetting even her beauty. 

[279] 



>» 



POETRY: A Magazint of Verse 

ftOMAGB TO QUINTUS SBPmaUS PLORBNTIS CHBISIIAKUS 

Ex Libris Graecae 
I 

Thcodorus will be pleased at my death, 
And someone else will be pleased at the death of Theodorus: 
And yet every one speaks evil of death. 

Incerti Auctwris 
II 

Tills place b the Cyprian's, for she has ever the fanqr 
To be looking out across the bright sea ; 
Tlierefore the sailors are cheered, and the waves 
Keep small with reverence, 

beholding her image. 

Anyte 
III 

A sad and great evil is the expectation of death — 
And there are also the inane expenses of the ftmeral; 
Let us therefore cease from pitying the dead 
For after death there comes no other calamity. 

Pdladas 

IV Troy 

Whither, O city, are your profits and your gilded shrines. 
And your barbecues of great oxen. 

And the tall women, walking your streets, in gilt clothes, 
With their perfume in little alabaster boxes? 
Where are the works of your home-bom sculptors? 

[280] 



y 
/. 



Homage to Quintus Septimius Florentis CkrisHanus 

Time's tooth is into the lot, and war's and fate's too. 
Envy has taken your all 
Save your douth and your story. 

Agathias Scholasticus 



Woman ? Oh, woman is a consummate rage, but dead or 
asleep she pleases. 
Take her — she has two excellent seasons. 

Palladas 

VI Nicharcus upon Phidon his doctor 

Phidon neither purged me, nor touched me ; 
But I remembered the name of his fever medicine and died. 

DANS UN OMNIBUS DE LONDRBS 

Les yeux d'une morte aimee 
M'ont salue. 

Enchasses dans im visage stupide 
Dont tous les autres traits etaient banals, 
lis m'ont salue. 

Et alors je vis bien des choses 
Au dedans de ma memoire 
Remuer, 
S'cveiller. 

[281] 



POETRY: A Magazine of Verse 

Je vis dcs canards sur le bord d'un lac minmculc, 
Aupres d'un petit enfant gai, bossu. 

Je vis les colonnes andennes en "toe" 
Du Pare Monceau, 
£t deux petites filles graciles, 
Des patridennes 

aux toisons couleur de lin, 
Et des pigeonnes 
Grasses 

commes des poulardes. 

Je vis le pare, 
Et tous les gazons divers 
Ou nous avions loue des chaises 
Pour quatre sous. 

Je vis les cygnes noirs, 
Japonais, 
Leurs ailes 

Teintees de couleur sang-de-dragon, 
Et toutes les fleurs 
D'Armenonville. 



Les yeux d'une morte 
M'ont salue. 



Ezra Pound 



[282] 



/ A 

EPIGRAMS 



I will close my door to shut out all possible errors. 
"But how am I to enter in?" cried Truth. 

"I obey not law, I am free!" — this is the boast of Dream. 
Truth says sadly to him, "That is why thou art false." 
Dream says, "Truth is bound in an endless chain of neces- 
sity." 
Truth says, "That is why I am perfectly true." 

Favor complains, "I give but never receive." 
Mercy says, "I give, but never ask." 

Tliou in the ditch hast an unlimited supply of mud. 
But what has he who walks above thee? 

The wasp murmured in contempt: "How ludicrously 
small are the honeycombs the bees make!" "Try to make a 
honeycomb still smaller," said the bee. 

"What costly preparations are for me," says the canal; 
"rivers come rushing without ever being asked." "Sir 
Canal," say his courtiers to him, "Tlie poor rivers are made 
only to supply you with water." 



The First takes the hand of the Last in a frank friendship. 
The Second keeps proudly aloof. 

The echo always mocks the sound — to conceal that she is 
his debtor. 

[283] 



POETRY: A Magazine of Verse 

Love walks with empty hands and smiling face. Prndcooe 
asks her, "What have you got for your wages?*' Love sxys, 
''It is in my heart, I can not show it.^ Pnidcooe sxys, 
"Whatever I get is in my hands." 



In the chink of the garden wall blossomed a tiny namdess 
flower. The rosebush was ashamed to own it as its kindred. 
The sun rose and smiled on it, saying, "Are you well, osy 
darlingr 

"How far are you from me, O fruit?" 
"I am hidden in your heart, O flower." 

"Who is there to take up my duties?" asked the setting 
sun. The world remained dark and silent. With joined 
palms said the earthem lamp, "I will do what I can, my 
master!" 

"What language is this of yours, O deep sea?" 
"It is the language of eternal question." 

What language is this in which you answer, O hig^ moun- 
tain?" 

It is the language of eternal silence." 



« 



« 



The arrow thinks it is free, for it moves, and the bow is 
bound, for it is still. The bow says to the arrow, "Your 
freedom depends on me." 

The world speaks truth. We take its meaning wrong 
and call it a liar. 

[284] 




Epigramt 



The infant flower opened iis eyes and found the world 
sweet and it said to the world, "My love, 1 hope you will 
last as long as I live." 

The flute knows it is the breath that gives birth to its 
music. The breath knows it is nothing. And he who plays 
on the flute is not known. 

The night comes secretly to open the buds in the forest, 
and disappears in silence. Flowers wake up and whisper, 
"We are of the morning!" The morning smiles and says. 

"Yes." 

Death threatens to take hts son, the thief his wealth, 
and his detractors his reputation, "But who is there to 
take away my joy?" asks the poet. 

The night kisses the face of the fading day and gently 
says, "1 am death, your mother. Do not fear me, I am to 
give you fresh birth." 

Death belongs to life as birth does, even as walking con- 
tains the raising of the foot as much as the laying of it 
down. 

Death, hadsi thou been but emptiness, in a moment the 
world would have faded away. Thou art Beauty: the 
world like a child rests on thy bosom for ever and ever. / 

RabinJranalh Tagore I 



[285] 



fOETRY: A 3im§m%ime •/ Terte 

STKAMX MEETINGS 



II Me bdbcU a cM ol earth 

H/j^r one woiiU tremUe; aod io what 
Gaip: ^Cao /Mr mofe?^ 

SOf wlKa I fee nea walk, I ahrajv ied 
Eanb! Hair have joo dooe dus? 

Tin to befriUered that I can't aaiccal 
Mf incTtdulhy. 



II 

The dark tf^Ke undemeatfa is full of boocs, 
The surface full of bodies — roving men, 
And moving above the surface a foam of eves : 
Over that is Heaven. All the gods 
Walk with cool feet. They paddle among the 
They scatter them like foam-flakes on the wind 
Over the human world. 

Ill 

You live there; I live here: 
Other people everywhere 
Haunt their houses, and endure 
Days and deeds and furniture, 

[286] 



Strange Meetings 



Circumstances, families, 
And the stare of foreign eyes. 



IV 



Often we must entertain, 

Tolerantly if we can, 

Ancestors returned again 

Trying to be modem man. 

Gates of memory are wide; 

All of them can shuffle in. 

Join the family; and, once inside, 

Oh, what an interference they begin! 

Creatures of another time and mood. 

And yet they dare to wrangle and dictate. 

Bawl their experience into brain and blood, 

And claim to be identified with Fate. 



Eyes float along the surface, trailing 

Obedient bodies, lagging feet. 
The wind of words is always wailing 

Where eyes and voices part and meet. 

VI 

Oh, how reluctantly some people learn 
To hold their bones together, with, what toil 

[287] 



POETRY: A Magazine of Verse 

Breadic and are moved, as dioug^ diey would letum. 
How ^adly, and be crumbled into ao3! 



They knock their groping bodies on die stones. 
Blink at the lidit, and startle at all sound. 

With their white lips learn only a few moans. 
Then go back underground. 

VII — BntTH 

One night when I was in the House of Death 
A shrill voice penetrated root and stone. 
And the whole earth was shaken under ground : 
I woke and there was light above my head. 

Before I heard that shriek I had not known 
The region of Above from Underneath, 
Alternate light and dark, silence and sound, 
Difference between the living and the dead. 

VIII 

It is difficult to tell 
(Though we feel it well) 
How the surface of the land 
Budded into head and hand ; 
But it is a great surprise 
How it blossomed into eyes. 

[288] 



Strange Met 



IX 

A flower is looking through the ground, 
Blinking in the April weather; 

Now a child has seen the flower : 
Now they go and play together. 

Now it seems the flower would speak, 
And would call the child its brother — 

But — oh, strange f orgetf ulness ! — 
They don't recognize each other. 



How did you enter that body ? Why arc you here ? 
Your eyes had scarcely to appear 
Over the brim — and you looked for me. 
I am startled to find you. How suddenly 
We were thrown to the surface, and arrived 
Together in this unexpected place! 
You, who seem eternal-lived; 
You, known without a word. 

XI 

London is big, I know, is big: 

So is the bee-hive to the boe; 
So is the dung-heap to the cockroach, 

And the flea-flesh to the flea. 

[289] 



POETRY: A Magazine of Vene 

Londoa is great, is great, of CDune: 

So is die ocean to die pool; 
So is die halter to die hone; 

So is folly to die fooL 

XII 

I often stood by my open gate 

Watching the passing crowd with no surprise; 
I had not ever used my eyes for hate 

Till they met your eyes. 

I don't believe this road was meant for jrou, 

Or, if it were, 
I don't quite know what I am meant to do 

While your eyes stare. 

XIII 

Memory opens ; memory doses. 
Memof}' taught me to be a man. 

It remembers everything: 

It helps the little birds to sing. 



It finds the honey for the bee: 

It opens and closes, opens and closes. 

[290] 



Harold Monro 



FIREFLIES 

I 

Children of the poor — 
Little plants 
In sandy soil, 

Among rocks, weeds, cans, old papers. 
And other junk 
In the shadow of a wall. 
Little plants — 
Children of the poor. 

II 

From the gallery. 
The ordiestra — 
A swarm of bees 
Making honey. 
Honey made of 
Sound. 

Ill 

Bud 
Needing opening — 
Let me open you. 
Fruit 

Needing ripening — 
Let me ripen you. 



Adolf tVoli 



[291] 



J 



POETRY: A Mmfmxine •/ Fertt 

OBSERVATIONS 



I observe: *'Our sentimental friend die mooo! 
Or possibly (fantastic, I confess) 
It may be Prcster John's balloon 
Or an old battered lantern hung aloft 
To light poor travellers to their distress.' 
She then: "How you digress T 



TCS5. 



And I then : "Someone frames upon the keys 
That exquisite nocturne, with which we explain 
The night and moonshine ; music which we seize 
To body forth our own vacuity." 

She then: "Docs this refer to me?" 
"Oh no, it is I who am inane. 

"You, madam, are the eternal humorist 
The eternal enemy of the absolute, 
Giving our vagrant moods the slightest twist! 
With your air indifferent and imperious 
At a stroke our mad poetics to confute — " 

And — "Are we then so serious?" /I 

LA FIGUA CHE PIANGE 

Stand on the highest pavement of the stair — 

Lean on a garden urn — 

Weave, weave, weave the sunlight in your hair — 

[292] 



7 t^ 



j^\ 



La Figlia che Piange 

Clasp your flowers to you with a pained surprise — 
Fling them to the ground and turn 
With a fugitive resentment in your eyes : 
But weave, weave the sunlight in your hair. 

So I would have had him leave, 

So I would have had her stand and grieve, 

So he would have left 

As the soul leaves the body torn and bruised, 

As the mind deserts the body it has used. 

I should find 

Some way incomparably light and deft, 

Some way we both should understand. 

Simple and faithless as a smile and shake of the hand. 

She turned away, but with the autumn weather 

Compelled my imagination many days — 

Many days and many hours: 

Her hair over her arms and her arms full of flowers — 

And I wonder how they should have been together 1 

I should have a lost a gesture and a pose. 

Sometimes these cogitations still amaze 

The troubled midnight and the noon's repose. 



I f ? , o^ 



MR. APOLLINAX 



When Mr. ApoUinax visited the United States 
His laughter tinkled among the teacups. 
I thought of Fragilion, that shy figure among the birdi trees, 

[293] 



POETRY: A Megazint of Vertt 

And of Priapus in the shrubbery 

Gaping at the lady in the swing. 

In the palace of Mrs. Phlaccus, at Profeswr Chanai'ng- 
Chcetah's, 

His laughter was submarine and profound 

Like the old man of the sea's 

Hidden under coral islands 

Where worried bodies of drowned men drift down in the 
green silence, dropping from fingers of surf. 

1 looked for the head of Mr. Apollinax rolling under a chair, 

Or grinning over a screen 

With seaweed in its hair. 

I heard the beat of centaurs' hoofs over the hard turf 

As his dry and passionate talk devoured the afternoon. 

"He is a charming man", "But after all what did he mean?" 

"His pointed cars — he must be unbalanced", 

"There was something he said which I might have chal- 
lenged." 

Of dowager Mrs. Phlaccus, and Professor and Mrs. Cheetah 

I remember a slice of lemon, and a bitten macaroon. ^^ 

'J. '! T^ 

MORNING AT THE WINDOW 

They are rattling breakfast plates in basement kitchens, 
And along the trampled edges of the street 
I am aware of the damp souls of housemaids 
Hanging despondently at area gates. 



[294] 




Morning at the fFindov 



The brown waves of fog toss up to me 
Twisted faces from the bottom of the street, 
And tear from a passerby with muddy skirts 
An aimless smile that hovers in the air 
And vanishes along the level of the roofs. 




TO MY MOUNTAIN 

O my mountain, my mountain — 
Enveloped in your cloak of snow 
Can you hear? 

Temple of my night, 
Cradle of my day, 
Can you hear? 



I warn you of the braggart of the sky, 
The sun ! the sun 1 
He outruns my warning words 
To steal your snows, 
O my mountain, my mountain. 

Great body^^ard of God — 
Can you hear? 

Mahiah Payson 

[295] 



POETRY: A Magazine of Ferte 

HOME 

Is it a tribute or betrayal when, 

turning from aU the sweet, accustomed ways. 
I leave your lips and eyes to seek you in 

Sopie other face? 

Why am I searching after what I have, 

And going far to find the near at hand? 
I do not know — I only know I crave 

To find you at the end. 



I only know that Love has many a hearth, 
That Hunger has an endless path to roam, 
-sAnd Beauty is the dream that drives the earth 

And leads me home. 

Louis Untermeyer 



L 



RAVAGE 

I did not dream one summer's rose 

Could blossom so luxuriantly. 
I never knew one summer's close 

Could take so much away from me. 

John S. Miller, Jr. 



[2%] 



J 



INVOCATION 

As pools beneath stone arches take 

Darkly within their deeps again 
Shapes of the flowing stone, and make 

Stories anew of passing men, 

So let the living thoughts that keep, 
Morning and evening, in their kind, 

Eternal change in height and deep. 
Be mirrored in my happy mind. 

Beat, world, upon this heart, be loud 

Your marvel chanted in my blood. 
Come forth, O sun, through cloud on cloud 

To shine upon my stubborn mood. 

Great hills that fold above the sea, 

Ecstatic airs and sparkling skies, 
Sing out your words to master me — 

Make me immoderately wise. 

John Drinkwater 



J 



[297] 



POETRY: A Magazine of Verse 

* HE FORGETS YVONNE ^' 

\ 

Turning a sudden corner, 

She reached the trysd^g place: 

The gods, grown weary d| the sun, 
Put twilight in her facc.^^ 



Dreams, swift hopes, rising, hl^ing, — 

\ 

At the will of the moon. 



Too soon, too late, too soon — ^ 
Were as a tide that rose and fell ^ 



Around us was the star-shine : 

Like May in flowers clad, 
Speaking, she had the voice of brooks 

That made the meadows glad. 

She spoke of the great wonder 
That in her heart was laid 

And in her life had come to pass: 
Ah, need she be afraid? 

The moon, with little vision. 

Saw what was going on. 
And by designing sorcery 

Made me forget Yvonne; 



\ 
\ 



[298] 



He Forgets Yvonne 

And lose her in this happy, 

Inconsequential crowd, 
Feeling in silence with Pierrette 

What Pierrot sings aloud. 

PIERRETTE GOES 

Pierrette has gone, but ft was not 

Exactly that she died,\ 
So mudi as vanished and lorgot 

To say where she would hide. 

To keep a sudden rendezvous, 

It came into her mind \ 
That she was late. What cdiild she do 

But leave distress behind? \ 

Afraid of being in disgrace, y 

And hurrying to dress, \ 

She heard there was another plac6, 

In need of loveliness. \ 

She went so softly and so soon — \ 
Sh 1 — hardly made a stir, \ 

But going took the stars and moon 
And sun away with her. 

fFUliam Griffith 

[299] 



POETRY: A Maa^^ne of Verse 

^(^jU^-v-o^JbL A THRUSH IN THE MOONLIGHT 

In came the moon and covered me with wonder, 
^^^^\ Touched me and was near me, and made me very still. 
r^^'^^ In came a rush of song, raining as from thunder, 
,v/v*^ Pouring importunate on my window-sill. 

[Jl/^ I lowered my head, I hid my head, I would not see nor 

^^ hear — 

s/^f^^-^^ The bird-song had stricken me, had brought the moon too 

near. 
^ But when I dared to lift my head, night began to fill 
\iiA^ With singing in the darkness. And then the thrush grew 

still. 

\ IJ And the moon came in, and silence, on my window-sill. 

A MOCKING-BIRD 

An arrow, feathery, alive, 

He darts and sings; 
Then with a sudden skimming dive 

Of striped wings 
He finds a pine and, debonair. 

Makes with his mate 
All birds that ever rested there 

Articulate. 

The whisper of a multitude 
Of happy wings 

[300] 



A Mocking-hiri 

Is round him, a returning brood, 

Eadi time he sings. 
Though heaven be not for them or him 

Yet he is wise, 
And daily tiptoes on the rim 

Of paradise. 

THB DEAD LOON 

There is a dead loon in the camp tonight killed by a clever 
fool. 

And down the lake a live loon calling. . . . 
The wind comes stealing, tall, muscular and cool, 

From his plunge where stars are falling. 

The wind comes creeping, stalking, 

On its night-hidden trail. 
Up to the cabin where we sit playing cards and talking. 

And only I, of them all, listen and grow pale. 

He glues his face to the window, addressing only me : 

Talks to me of death, and bids me hark 
To the hollow scream of a loon, and bids me see 

The face of a clever fool reflected in the dark. 

That loon is farther on the way than we are. 

It has no voice with which to answer while we wait. 
But it is with me, and with the evening star ; 

Its voice is my voice, and its fate my fate. 

[301] 



POETRY: A Magazine of Verse 



I 



TO NO OKK Df PAmCULAS 

Locate your love, you lose your lofc. 

Find her, you look swsy; 
Now mine I never quite ditcem. 

But trace her eveiy day. 

She has a diousand proences. 

As surely seen and heard 
As birds that hide bdiind a leaf 

Or leaves that hide a bird. 

Single your love, you lose your love. 

You cloak her face with clay; 
Now mine I never quite discern — 

And never look away. 

AT THE TOUCH OF YOU 

At the touch of you, 
As if you were an archer with your swift hand at the bow, 
The arrows of delight shot through my body. 

You were spring, 
And I the edge of a cliff, 
And a shining waterfall rushed over me. 

THE EARTH-CLASP 

Whether you fled from me not to have less 
Of love but to have all without a night 

[302] 



Too much, like one who moves a cup which might 
Btim over with the mounting of excess, 
Or whether you had felt in my caress 
The fingertips of surfeit and of blight 
Attempting love, or whether your quick flight ' 
Was to another love, I will not guess. 

1 touch the pillow that has touched your head. 
And the brief candle that has lighted you 
Sheds bleak and ashen light upon a face 
As absent as the moon . . . till to replace 
Your vanished arms, earth beckons me anew, 
And in her clasp something of you is dead. 




HE BROUGHT US CLOVER-LEAVES 

He picked us clover-leaves and starry grass 
And buttercups and chickwecd. One by one, 
Smiling he brought them. We can never pass 
A roadside or a hill under the sun 
Where his wee flowers will not return with him — 
His little weeds and grasses, cups that brim 
With sunbeams, leaves grown tender in the dew. 

Come tHen. oh. come with us — and each in turn, 
Children and elders, let us thread a few 
Of all the daisies ... to enfold his um. 
And fade beside this day through which he passei 
Bringing us clover-leaves and starry grasses! 
[303] 



POETRY: A Magazine of Verse 

WISDOM 

Old man, if I only knew 

A quick way to be wise like you ! 

Young man, this is all I know 
To impart before I go : 
You must keep your goal in si^t 
Labor toward it day and ni^t; 
Then at last arriving there — 
You shall be too old to care. 

You would even wiser be 

Old man, were you young like me. 



ECCB HOMO 

Behold the man alive in me. 

Behold the man in you ! 
If there is God — am I not he. 

Shall I myself undo? 

I have been waiting long enough. 

Old silent gods, good-by! 
I wait no more. The way is rou^i — 

But the god who climbs is I. / 

fVitter Bynner I 

[304] ~ ^ 




EDITORIAL COMMENT , 



JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY I 

E^D, my tardi and gentltrntii; 
Slillfd ikt tongue and itaytd the prn; 
Chftk unfuiktd and tyt unlit — 
Doat viith tift and glad of it. 
Curb your praiiei now at thin— 
Dfad, my lords and gtntltmtn. 
What he turoagAt found ill retaarJ 
In the tolerance of the Lord. 



Low he lies, yet high and great 
Looms he, lying Ihut in state: 
Hota exalted o'er ye vihen 
Dead, my lords and gentlemen. 

J. W. R. 

Riley was one of the poets of power m that it was given 
to him to "tell the talc of the tribe." He was keen engu^ 
in imagination, fine enough in sympathy, and creative enough 
in art, to apprehend his fellow-countryman and Hx his type. 
/ed during his life at this high distinction — that he 
speaks for Indiana, and Indiana is what he made it. Still 
more, he has widened the bounds of Indiana, made it absorb 
its mid die- western neighbors to right and left so far as their 
country people and village people arc true to hb type. And 
be made the world love his Indiana — his cheerful, whimsical, 
unassuming, shrewd and sentimental neighbors, the demo- 
cratic people of the plains, people strongly individualized and 
yet one not more than t'other, all measuring up to the same 
standard of extremely human feelings and failings. He has 
given to a big state a personality — in a sense his own person- 
[305] 



WJBl: £ M^mm. 



b««h^^^>. 




m/mvc 

cfc we an bcpHwc ts £czi id a inr of tbe 
Kdcys inaesot vat ■« kssHi bcaci — yes, 
Md ia dop ami ocbcr fantiTtar aiwiiah. 

Hit art, like die duraocr of die people be spob ii 
Hoifilc aad direct. If it pddcd crfun lo die I 
a too obviou* Kntiinenulity, it row in stioog i 
■ IHifcnant tcndemcu, or even to a veiled sugsestioa of 
heroic beauty. And always, between both extremes it was 
JriJnt'ent with humor — humor always gentle sod tender, 
ticvrr grim or (jrotesque or sardonic. 

f(e wai, of coune, to a degree unusual even among poets, 
a child. And out of a rare sympathy with fellow-children 
he WM able lo produce masterpieces of child -charRcter like 
UttU Orphant Annie, Tkr Raggedy Man, The Bear Story 
[306] 



Jamti IVhitcomi RtUy 

and other familiar ballads ot eternal youth. But beyond this, 
he was able to see grown-ups almost with a child's direct 
and untroubled vision, and to sketch them vividly in a few 
swift lines. As Edith Wyatt wrote in the second number 
of this magazine (Nov., 1912): 

Among Mr. Rilcy'i many distinguished faculties of cxeeutioa in 
exprMiing, in Mimulating, "an exquiiite appreciation of the niost 
simple and universal relations of life," one faculty hai been, in so 
far as I know, very litlle mentioned — I mean his mastery in creating 
character. Mr. Riley has expressed, has incarnated in the melodies 
and harmonies of his poems, not merely several living, breathing 
human creatures a> they arc made by tiicir destinies, but a whole 
world of his own, a vivid world of country- road i, and couniry-iown 
alreeti, peopled nith farmers and tramps and step-mothers and 
children, trailing clouds of glory even when they boast of the 
luperiorities of "Rcnielaer"; a world of hard-working wotticn and 
bard-luck men, and poverty and prosperity, and drunkarda and 
raccoons and dogi and grandmothers and lovers. To have pre- 
sented through the medium of rhythmic chronicle, a world so 
sharply limned, so funny, so tragic, to mean, so noble, seems (o ui 
in itself a striking achievement in the craft of verse. 

It is even more — it is to be immortal. Riley has captured 
a region and an era, and so handled and molded and 
stamped it that be is inextricably bound up with it — an an- 
cestor of all who are born in it. It is a smaller region than 
the one Marie Twain mapped out with epic grandeur and 
explored with abysmal laughter— in a sense it is one of its 
neighborhoods. Smaller also than Spoon River, for it is 
all on the surface of the earth, amid summer suns and 
storms, while Spoon River digs deep to the earth's centre, 
where all nations are neighbors. It is a little world that 
Riley gives to us, but a world very human and funny and k 
brotherly, and his best poems speak from the heart o^'i^'^ 
with its authentic lyric voice. H.Tlffw,^^^ 
[307] 



POETRY: A Maga 



OF EDITORS AND POETS 

All young poets hate editors. And they are ri^t. ^Vhcn 
a poet becomes tolerant of an editor, or an editor of a poet, it 
is not a healthy sign ; both have ceased to be alert, 

A wrathful young poet is the editor's best friend. He may 
be overbearing, insolent, but he is apt to be honest. Tbe 
editor suggests cutting or changing his poem; the poet Sics 
into a rage and tells the editor what he thinks of him. This 
induces a proper spirit of humility in the editor. (1 am not 
speaking of editors who present to insult a front as smooth 
and impervious as a hair-doth sofa!) It also relieves the 
poet, who, when he has cooled oS a bit, wonders if his poem 
might not be improved according to the editor's suggestion 
or according to a new idea of his own. Both therefore con- 
tinue on a purely human footing of give and take, healthilf 
antagonistic and sociable. 

But the established poet, whose reputation is not only made 
but embalmed, and the editor who has no more plasticity 
than a hitching post — there is no friction between thera. 
They are mutually tolerant of one another. Why not? The 
relation between them is simply that of a manufacturer and 
a retailer of any reasonably staple commodity, like sugar, or 
molasses, or green cheese. 

Of course it takes skill to be a poet! But an editor? A 
pair of shears, a blue pencil, and a paste-pot! All the poet 
in me hates the editor. The editor in me swTars that I am 
a very bad poet; the poet knows that the editor is a fooU 
And neither one is entirely wrong! A. C. H. 

[308] 



1 y- REVIEWS 

THOMAS MACDONAGH ^S CRITIC 



Literature tn Ireland: Studies Jruh and Angh-Irisk, by 

Thomas MacDonagh, Talbot Press, Dublin. 

1 have before me a very able and interesting book. If 
the tragic death of the author casts upon it any temporary 
accidental interest, I would say only that this has in no way 
influenced my opinion. 

It is fine proof of Ireland's real vitality that, at a time 
when we arc so fully tired of Celticism, when Celticism is 
to truly worn out, we should meet in quick succession a great 
novelist like James Joyce and so level and subtle a critic as 
Thomas MacDonagh. 

The first part of his present book is taken up with what 
will seem to some a technical discussion of the "Irish Mode", 
of the effect of Irish idiom and cadence on English verse. 
I indicated something of the sort when I pointed out that 
Mr. Yeats' cadence had been saved from the inanity prevalent 
among his English contemporaries, by his having been 
brought up on The County of Mayo and such ballads. Mac- 
Donagh has gone into the matter fully and carefully. I do 
not know that many of his dicta will seem startling or 
heretical to the readers of Poetry, of whom he seems to 
have been one, (One of the finest tributes to the magazine 
is that he should have chosen to quote from it at some length, 
from an essay by A. C. H., who is probably the best critic 
now writing in America.) But the more books we have 
[309] 



POETRY: A Magazint of Verst 

saying these same intelligent things the better, and the sooner 
will we get rid of the papUr-machi tradition which has been 
a curse on both sides of the Atlantic for so many decades, the 
heritage of what MacDonagh calls "the genteel days". 
(This genteelncss is much more active and oppressive than 
anyone not actually engaged in the production of literature is 
likely to be aware of, and I have never yet met a layman 
who could not be "made to sit up" by a simple recital of facts 
regarding it.) 

MacDonagh's boolc is important and I doubt if 1 can sho^ 
its trend better than by quotation, even by a very brief and 
fragmentary quotation of broken phrases: 

Difficulty in gclllcig rid of . . . . iiivcrjioai, poetic wordi, cum- 
brous epithets, ■ . - genteel days. 
Metaphor that can not be underslond wirhoui knowledge of bbtoric 

eventi which hare oot affected Ireland. 
Tendency to hammer the Btressed lyllabteB and slur the unitreiied. 
Mu«ic goe* out of iti way, aa it were, to follow the varying ex- 

preition of the word. (This properly commended.) 
Mathew Arnold on Celtic literaiure, largely a work of ficlion. 

When Mr. A. C. Benson changes nei'er into ne'er in a 
poem by Emily Bronte, for the sake of regularity, Mac- 
Donagh gives him the drubbing that he deserves, (Thty 
have tried to do the same with the Poema del Cid, though, 
as Dr. Renncrt has said with such gentleness, cleaning his 
spectacles, "To suppose that a man who could write a poem 
like that wouldn't have beer able to count ten on his fingers, 
and put ten syllables in a line if he'd wanted to!") 

MacDonagh remarks further: 
The Irish reader would be content to pronounce ihc wordi as ihey 

come, to read the lines as prose readi. 

[310] 



d 



Thomas Macdonagk as Critic 

Take ihe lioe frankly as il 

beauty of vibralion in tl 

words of poeiry. 
There is a rccufteoce in thii veoe, but it it not the 

foot. 

I am not quoting to back up a thesis, I can not hope to 
give all of MacDonagh's argument. It is, however, interest- 
ing to find Dohnetsch "justifying vers libre" in his book on 
the history of seventeenth- and eighteenth -century music, 
and MacDonagh at the same time analyzing the breaking 
from false shackles in a quite different manner. Perhaps 
all metric has grown in a lengthening of the bar or foot 
or imit. At any rate there has hetn in our time a general 
and wide-spread perception that the conventions and arti- 
ficialities of the horse-hair period arc not the eternal unchang- 
ing law. 

Of course the rules of rimei and the re»t were never atbitraty. 
They were discovered. They are "nature methodised". 

The book contains sane remarks on assonance and its riches. 
Its author has a shot at that old dotard, Palgrave, who 
has done considerable harm and is only kept on because 
his name is romantic, and because there is a certain amount 
of capital sunk in the plates of his inefficient production. 

MacDonagh makes very intelligent pleas for fair trans- 
lation of Gaelic, and gives Stokes' translation of a strophe in 
contrast with certain bad translations in verse. Stokes says: 

A hedge of trees surrounds me, a blackbird's lay lingi lo me — 
prai<e which I will not hide. Above my booklet, the lined one, the 
Ifilling of Ihc birds sings lo rae. In a gr»y msntte the cudcoo sings 
to me from ilie top of the bushes. May the Lard proteet roe I I 
write well under the greenwood. 

[311] 



POETRY: J Mafazint of ffrtt 

Thb b excellently concrete. The other cx>mpte$ fncn 
old Irish are also convincing. In the Trjtt After Death we 
find the trail of the monk spoiling an otherwise fine poem, » 
happens in the Saxon texts also. Christianit)- was a handi- 
cap to all carlr writers in either ishmd. 

Early Irish poems we might have found elsewhere. 1 do 
not lutow where else n-e should be likely to hear much of 
contemporary writers in Gaelic, of whom there seem to 
be several worthy of note. Padraic ^lac Piarats b made 
interesting by MacDonagh's translation. 

The poel onct again ii bli own Ami audience. HLi poetrr is a 
mailer betvtcco himttif and himiclf. If otheri afterward come and 
■hare hii joy, the glin a ibetn. 

MacDonagh's book is well larded with common sense. He 
was one of the few people who could write intelligibly on 
matters of metric, and also readably. His loss is a loss both 
to Ireland and to literature, and it is a loss bound xo be 
more felt as his work becomes more widely known. Though 
this last book of his is addressed in the main to the Gael, 
the subtlety and the sanity of the general criticism contained 
in it should win for it a wider audience. Etra Pound 

THE TRADITION OF MAGIC 

The Litteners. by Walter De La Mare. Henr>- Holt & Co. 
Thoughtful and analytic writers are all about us, and 
their numbers arc growing rapidly. Not content with Ut- 
tering mere editorial dicta, they have invaded the mucty 
-quiet of our revered "journals of opinion" ; they have CTcn 
[312] 



The Tradition of Magic 

appeared in the rose-curtained and violet-scented boudoirs of 
the fifteen-cent magazines. The world has never been » 
full of keen and clever men. The impulse of self-study has be- 
come not only personal but popular. And with surprising 
results! The song-makers in particular, have been caught 
in the tremendous tide of new tendencies; they give us the 
secret of everj'thing from mid-western villages to fire-engines ; 
from the old formalism to "the new freedom" ; from social- 
ism to psycho-analysis. It is not rare to find a poet who 



is full ot meanmg. J 
touched with magic. 

Ai least tliat is tru< 
pushed and crowded ^ 
be th ought les 



[ it is rare to find one who is even 



; in America. Our poets have been so 
vith thoughts that they have had little 
But England has always, even in the 
thick of war, developed this quality. She has fostered what 
amounts to a tradition of magic. Nothing could better illus- 
trate this unbroken stream that has run down from Spenser 
through Shakespeare and Hcrrick and Keats and Blake, than 
three unaffected English singers of the present day. Un- 
affected, I might add, in every way; for white Masefield was 
animating English verse with rich vulgarisms, while W. W. 
Gibson was dramatizing the laborers of London, and Aber- 
crombic putting his Gloucester folk into close-packed blank 
verse, Ralph Hodgson, W. H. Davics and Walter De La 
Mare kept on writing their curiously untimely and curiously 
beautiful poetry. All three are strangers here, although the 
little yellow booklets of Hodgson, now published by the 
Poetry Bookshop in London, are beginning to be sought after, 

(313) 



FOETKY: 1 Mmr'i 



•I r. 



■ ■ 

Hodpn WW JM U p J a tn l w Aania V E. V. 
Lmem* tkdeoKr ajFor >b* >■ ' suufal M^^pradMaic 
taxnr. Mi. L«c» iiiiilij, » na»nfa if Hi l^iji's l»» 

Of HBdi^KitT Mtd Twff tt ijfptttBoK, lacB lu— ig Ivncs ■■ 
Simfidity Strtrt. Tkt Giptj Gvl and fiJUJUuM* «< the Ihvs 
paam. T*/ BmU, The Somg •/ //•««- mU Ac cMfn^MB £^«^ 
Bm Ik dia not tuaaioa Time, jm vW Cfta Jf a. dbt fs^- 
mcM of Hodpan'f dui ibow> bim u )» Aium kJ po»- 
•Mr hii tDM tiagxal. The fine half lalkws: 






d«r7 



Al[ thiap ni pre T«a 
Wai TM be ay giM«: 

Bcl>( t*t TOSr jraDCt 
Of direr die bew, 

GoldMBtb* (hall bMt J«D 



^^^^^^^^V Ptacof^ itiaU bow l» fo^ 

^^^^^^^ Linle hejt Muf, 

^^^^^^^^L Oh, ■od rwMt |pH( wilt 

^ Time, rna o'J pp«T «*», 

^^1 Wby hiRco avray? 

^B Davics' pit u Icm delicate and more obvious ; it i« a bit 

foreteen, prepared; one mi^t even call his a maihcmaticat 
maeic AIm) hti indcbtednen to Blake and Hettidc is more 
apparent. Yet be has an idiom that is his own; an idiom 

Lifaat is as fresh and clean as his nmf vision. Hb Svmfi a/ 
Joy and Oihen (1911) show him in his roost cfaxTactcristic 



[3!4] 



The Tradition of Magic 

moods and measures, particularly in such dissimilar poems as 
Dayi too Short, Shopping, the limpid and rare blank verse 
of Tht Child and The Mariner and this snatch, The Ex- 
ample: 

Here', an nimpU from 
A butterfly, 

Thii on a rough, hard rock 
* Happy can lie; 

FtitDiJiMi and b[I alone 

On ihii univrcetenrd ttonc. 

Now let my bed be hard, 
No cite take I : 

I'll make my joy like this 
Small butterfly: 

Whole happy heart has poner 

To make a stone a flower. 
Walter De La Mare is the only one of the three to have 
achieved an American publisher, and we may hope thai the 
reception of The Listeners will warrant the reprinting of 
the author's earlier Peacock Pie, which, though it lacks 
the power and intensity of The Listeners, has as dnt a magic 
and even more mellowness and mirth. The first third of it 
contains more inspired and unforgettable nursery rhymes and 
nonsense lyrics than were ever collected anywhere except in 
Mother Goose's own anthology. 

De La Mare's distinction lies not so much in what he says 
as in the accent in which he says it. It is an utterance that 
lifts his work above its old-fashioneJ turns and archaisms. 
Nor do these poetic left-overs bother him; he uses invereions 
constantly and carelessly — one might almost say he uses them 
confidently, for, infusing them with new salience, he makes 

[315] 



FOCTKY: J Jf«f«si»« •/ Wrrtm 



Be oa c*^ p« ■Mtfc Be fvynMt An<^f^« 



B h«r i< yaear that iktr ME. Hc« 
ri,WMcb fcr Mipij »fcri 
l^a««faBra<k. " "J 

Howi ewer dKA. 1fa» Mt micriI irf aM ■ 
TAw Litftmtn, wWck cms cfec iccrnc ««hMC is ti 
^rmM Tniiuiiilii al dhk. b hv k ■ ■ 




$U«ptr, witfa its tlutDbef-drcacfaed picture: 
Errn hci band* upon ker lap 



Or d)M Jecorttive winUr-piecc, as akilfullf sinqilc ai ■ , 
HirothiEC color-print: 



Tberc btoom* n 






On lt«ld« (otlatn »nd bare 

Fearful of iti pale ^lare 
In flocki the *tarling« rise; 

Slide through ihe fiony air. 
And prtch iriih plaintive erica. 

[316] 



Tkt Tradition of Mafic 

Oa\j the inky rook. 

Hunched cold in ruffled wiogi, 
1(9 mawy dmi forsook, 

Cam of unnumbered spriagl. 
Or, in a less dtlineative and more eliish mood, The [find, 
with tt> macabre humor; or, in a more sturdy, half-heroic 
vein, The Scarecrow; or that most quiet-colored and musical 
of all written nocturnes, Nod: the beginning and end of 
which run : 

Soflly alon^ the road of cveninE. 
In a IwiliKht dim with roie. 

»ith dew 



■ Umbi outnumber a noon'i roiei, 

Yet. when night'^ ihidDw's fall, 

9 blind old >heep-dog, Slumber-9oon, 



Hl9 



c the quiet stecp9 of dreamland, 



The V 
Hi* ram'i bell ringg 'neath ai 
"Reit, rcjl, and rest tglln." 

He writes with the sophistication of the artist and the 
mind of a child. And, like most imaginative children, his 
pictures are the reflection of a mood thst is half lost in 
phantasy, half in fear. 

Ffodgson, Davies, De La Mare — they make a trio of un- 
usual voices ; voices that rise with a strange color and sweet- 
ness in these dark and unsweetened days. 

Lottii Vntfrmtftr ' 



[317] 



POETRY: ^ Magoxime of Vtrte 

MODESN MONOLOGUES 

FlaihUghn. by Mary AidU. Duffield & Co. 

Yean ago, Erarrsoti said that he thought the i 
monologue was destined to supersede all other ; 
poetry. To prophecy the absolute doniinan>ce of : 
form of poetry is a dangerous, and one may say a futile, thin 
to do, but still the dramatic monologue does seem a pcculurlf 
sympathetic form in which to render the psycholo^cal subtl^l 
tics of modem life. Mr^. Aldis's book contains many mono-l 
logues and duologues, and 1 have no hesitation in sayiag thjil 
it is Just these poeou which are the most successful in haM 
arresting volume. 

Mrs. Aldis is first of all a dramatist, as her previous book,fl 
Plays for Small Slater, proved. And it I's the dramatic in- 1 
stinct which has urged her to poetr}-. The book b divided I 
into three sections; the first, Cily Skelckei. and the Vast,\ 
Sloriet in Metre, are frankly dramatic. Only the middlel 
section, to which no name is given, contains lyrics, and i 
these the author falls far below the level set in the earlier and| 
later poems. Mrs. Aldis has a remarkable power of ) 
trating the personality of a character, of thinking his or herfl 
thoughts, and speaking them in his or -her words. Sbe i 
stimulated by contact with these creatures of her tmaginatioit,! 
and strikes a white heat for their portrayal. With an cagrrS 
and faithful sympathy, she walks the streets of her dty, : 
mirrors the life she sees streaming by her on the sidewalla 
and murmuring from open windows above. 

t318] 



Modern Monologues 

The merest shadow of contact, and the poet has grasped 
the intentness of a situation, the meaning of an action, the 
cause of an expression. This is the gift of the dramatist. 
The lyrist functions from unity, the dramatist from duality. 
Every true writer of drama needs himself plus the outside 
world; the lyrist only requires the first of these equations. 
Shorn of her fictitious characters, Mrs. Aldis is only partly 
herself. Her dramatic sketches may be extremely slight, 
but they are always crisp and sure, as in this little thumb-nail 
drawing : 

FLASHLIGHTS 

The winter dusk creeps up the Avenue 
With biiing cold. 
Bebind bright nindow panes 
In gauzy gicraenti 
Waxen ladies smile 
Ai .hin-.leeved men 
Huitle them off iheir pedeitali for the night 

Along the Avenue 
A lirl comes hurtling, 
Holdinc ber shawl. 
She stops (□ look in at ihe window. 
"Oh Gee I" she says, "look at the chiffon niuff I" 
A whimpering dog 
F«her> up to cringe agalmt her skirt. 
Now take this lyric : 

SEEKING 

Swifi like Ihe lark 
Out of the dark 

One Cometh, singing; 



[319] 



POETRY: A Mtgax 



'I y 



er It 



Forth to the dawn 
Uips like * fann 

A cry of high greetiog, 
Into ihe lUD 
Two thai have run 
Seeking, are meeiiog. 
The crispness has gone, and instead of the sure, swift, 
simple words, wc have the old, weak poetic jareon of "One 
Cometh, singing," we have worn similes such ss "Swift like 
the larL," or "Leaps like a fawn." 

The critic is inclined to believe these to be early poems, but 
the lyric To Maurice Bromn must be recent, and here too 
is a wooliness, vagueness of treatment, and a slipping into old 
epithets like "wan hands" and "glory from the earth and sky," 
with the weakness of a tortured inversion in "Draughtsman 
terrible," which are never to be found in the dramatic poems. 
As a dramatic poet Mrs. Aldis has few equab in present- 
day poetry. She is almost as stark as Mr. Masters, and 
more pitying; and if she has neither the broad sense of 
society en masse of Mr. Sandburg, nor the masterful de- 
tachment of Mr. Frost, she is in some ways more pathetic 
than either. There ts a tender, feminine compassion under 
all the vulgar misery of her stories, which tears at the read- 
er's heart and makes these poems sharp with anguish. 

Mrs. Aldis deals with the most sordid elements of our 
urban population. Her people do not follow the clean, 
strong professions of men who earn their day's wages by 
the sweat of their hands. Instead, she reveals the lives of men 
and women who batten on the more degenerate, the 
more luxurious and effeminate, instincts of our population. 



I 



[320] 



Modern MonoloffuM 

Here are Barber Shops, Manicure Establishments, Vapor 
Baths, the hundred and one unvigorous, unedifying trades; 
with their painful concomitants of a Patic Bench at night, 
a Police Magistrate's room, a Prison, and an Insane Asylum. 
And yet. so fine is Mrs. Aldis's art, that in almost every case 
these sordid precincts throw off their sordidness to become 
merely the pitiful backgrounds of tragedy in her skilful 
hands. tyindoiv-wUking is one of the finest and most tender 
of these stories; Reaion is the most terrible. There is keen 
irony in Lave in the Loop, and Converse. The dedication 
is the one lyric in the book which can rank in treatment 
the stories. TTicse are the last two stanzas: 
ihcK 






My book upon somr q 
&lo«alh your touch 
Shall wake, perhapi, 
And ipeak again 
My wonder, my delight, 
My questioning before the 

Somewhere 



I 



'O^l 



I ihall be ainging, siuging. 
Altogether a most interesting book, full of sincerity, high- 
idcd endeavor, and notable achievement. ^- 

Amy Loweli^^ 

A PARODIST ^1 

- and Other Poets," by Louis Untermeyer. Henry 
Holt & Co. 

Good parody is one of the most convinciing snd diverting 
forms of criticism. Mr. Louis Untermeyer, in his latest 
volume, is always critic and usually more: poet, satirist, wag, 
[321] 



nWTEF ± 



M.M tZZ T ± I 



- r^^j 



» IDC 



urn nciezTf 



win 

3ii;c X graanrrc j'" — ■ ■■_ ]ji each 
5 .e» iin- iri' 

s«i. When 



Txm Dxve 



-aocjik dbeir qro, 






•L 



r^r ^:i:c rr=g 



d coUabors- 



T "^ — ■ 



ac Isc^cr zhjls i scrtcg s3d?es&. A third 



^ " 



t:^'.^^ sttt3sii.T licrer. so are 



ro call TOT decidedly 
H. B. F. 



[322] 



OUR CONTEMPORARIES 

A NEW QUABTERLY 

Form, a Quarterly of thr Arts, edited by Austin O. Spare I 

and Francis Marsdcn. John Lane, London and New | 

YorL 

I can not imagine why this new international quarterly is j 
called Form, unless it is meant as a fonn or style-book of 
various specimens of typography ; for the aspect of the period- 
ical reminds one of nothing so much as of specimen pages 
of typography and inks from The Inland Printer. The 
typography ranges from cold font type to many ditfercnt 
varieties of hand- lettering. It is not quite exact to say that 
no two pages are alike, but of the verse at least it is true 
that no two adjacent contributions are printed alike; nor, in 
one instance, is one page confined to a single style of cal- 
ligraphy. Some of the poems are printed throughout in 
black ink; others with red titles and capitals. A poem by 
T. Sturge Moore is all in red, and in Charms, by W. H. 
Davies, we ^d the couplets alternately black and red. 

With so much confusion to the eye it was difficult at first 
to do more than see the poems en bloe, and while in this 
mood I discovered that the best things in the magazine, as 
far as the graphic arts go, are Frank Brangwyn's woodcut, 
Charles Ricketts' lithograph, and the four small wood-cuts 
by Roald Kristian. Charles Shannon's composition for his \ 
circular wood-cut tries to go around with the circle and 
doesn't succeed. The full-page drawings by Austin O. Spare j 
are pathetically "of the schools" — the kind of "good", utterly j 
[323] 



POETRY: A Magazine of Vtrst 

lifeless drawings of which one sees hundreds in any school 
concoitrs — with a little dash of symbolism, of very obvious 
allegory, thrown in. It is vety Anglais. Likewise the sup- 
posed grotesques by Mr. Sparc and by Philip Ncwston have 
no clement of the grotesque about them. The grotesque 
is not — so far as the artistic or the aesthetic sense is CqO' 
cemcd — either ugly, or evil. And all that is ugly is not 
grotesque. These drawings do not achieve the distinction of 
being evil. 

It is not surprising that Edmund J. Sullivan, in an 
article accompanying these drawings, mentions as a notable 
feature of the grotesque certain monstrosities of nature, such 
as the Siamese twins — or worse. But there is nothing gro- 
tesque about the botched jobs of nature. Mr. Sullivan says, 
"In nature the borderland of the 'funny' and absurd exists." 
But this is not true ; it is only in our perception, which is far 
from absolute, that the borderland exists. We have no right 
to assume that the Creator finds us any less funny and absurd 
than the dodo or the hippopotamus. Caliban would not have 
been a grotesque without Shakespeare. The grotesque is 
conditioned by the artist ; in the hands of the artist, it has the 
same elements of force, unity, beauty, strength, that his work 
which presents a more conventionally ordered conception of 
beauty reveals. The grotesque in art must, and can be, 
defined in terms of an. The grotesque in nature is gro- 
tesque only through art. 

But this subject is engrossing, and w nu^t be that of 

"automatic drawing," on which notes are contributed bjr 

[324] 



A New Quarterly 

Frederick Carter and drawings by Mr. Sparc. Ooe mig^t 
tslce this more seriously if the results given promised more 
for an than for psycho-analysis. Mr. Carter also contributes 
several designs, not automatic. One of these, Rumors, could 
have been handled with much more force by one of The 
Masses artists — but I don't know how many people in Lon- 
don know The Masses. 

As for the rest of the magazine, Mr. Leonard Inkster's 
remarks on Imitnlioit begin where they end — in a vague 
mist. Harold Massingham contributes a satiric sketch, 
called The Uealisls Limited, and R. B. Cunningham Gra- 
ham an interesting impression of buying horses in South 
America for the war. Edward Eastaway has a good poem 
called Lob, presenting an essentially English pixy who re- 
appears in country lanes and other places through the cen- 
turies. I don't know, after all, whether one can say much 
more of the other poems than that they are respectively char- 
acteristic of their authors as one knows them. W. H. 
Davies' Charms is written in couplets obviously and inten- 
tionally reminiscent of Herrick or Blake. In The Viiiior, 
however, under the mask of a conventional form, he gives us 
an image strikingly concrete and vivid, without bursting the 
old bottle ; no doubt it would delight the heart of an imagist. 
Harold Massingham's Recipe for an ImagisI Poem fails to 
produce one. The poems of Walter De La Mare and T. 
Sturgc Moore, one apiece, have a certain distinction. Other 
poems are by Laurence Binyon, Laurence Housman, J, C 
Squire, Francis Burrows and Lady Margaret SackviUe. Of 

[325] 



4 



POETRY: A Mafa%i»t of Vtri 

course I have kept the eight "new" poems by W. B, YeaC 
till the last. These at least would appease me for 
lack of form that I find, on the whole, in Form. They t 
and the>' do; far I found them none the Ie« beautiful for 
being already familiar — they were published in the F^ 
niary, 1916, number of Poetry, and the^- are reprinte<t 
without a word of acknowledgment. J, C. H, 

ARTIST VERSUS AMATBUK 

One would hardly expect to find in The LittU Review 
such advice as that given by Mr. Harold Bauer in Tkm 
Campltal Amateur, or How Not To Be An Artist, but it 
precisely what one would expect of Mr. Bauer- And after 
all the delightful thing about The Little Reviexv is its 
expectedncss. When asked to write an article, Mr. Bauer 
said that writing was not his art. Nevertheless he gave 
very pertinent — or impertinent — suggestions, among them 
the two following: 
"Le ilyle fail I'kammr" 

If you want la become an author, give up your life ro Itie study 
of calligraphy; if i painter, devote yourself to the manufactuie of 
paints md bruahe*; if i cornposer. commil to Tncmory rhe number 
of nolci in every standard claitieal nork; and if a singer or instru* 
menlalisc, spend your whole energy in the eilabliihing of a "lound 
technical foundation." Emotional expression can then, if desired, 
be subsequenlty spread like treacle on bread over til these differ- 
ent itylic bases, this operation requiring neither skill nor expresaicm. 
Ptritnalily ; or. 01 lome authsrilin havt if, inJividualily. 

This ii the grealesi asset of the amateur. An artist It like trtjj- 
body in ihe world. The book we read, (he picture we see or IM 
which renders taneible our own dimly'fcli thongha 





■rtist, and nilb the universe ol which these expruiions are but 
reflections of utiiecn and unheard forces. An artist combine! the 
power and reiponaibilities of the ariatocrai with the fcetingi of 
an anarchist, he is the guardian of privilege and (be deatroyer of 
authority, the tevcler of barriers and (he creator of the lupernian, 
the leader and servant of humanity and . . . the Arch Enemy of 
the Amaieurl The Artist is like all humanity, but the Amateur is 
not like the Artist. The Amateur must hang on for dear life to 
his precious soul and resist to the last gasp (he incursions of any 
outside force in which he can iracc ihe sembtancc of his own nature; 
for if anythin(r gets in somethiug may get out, and he won't be able 
to sort himself out afterwards. Hence the Amateur must be an_ 
IndividualisI; ochervrise he is doomed t 



ROBERT FROSTS QUALITY ^ 

It is not easy to define the exact quality of Robert Frost's 
poems, but a certain characteristic of The Home Stretch jn 
the July Century is characteristic of them all : a sense, that is, 
of the significance of the apparently insignificant moments of 
life; he makes us feel these moments to be as important as 
they really are. It is very much lite that light of permanence 
in which the "little Dutch masters" saw and painted their 
otherwise commonplace interiors. It is what Mr. Frost makes 
of his New England scenes and characters that coimts. His 
imitators — of which there begin to be some — will never get 
more than a husic of externality ; they might as well imitate 
Will Carleton's Farm Ballads. 

This poet never takes the bloom off the thing he gives us. 
His precision is in giving us chemicals in a state of solution, 
of inter-action, before they have crystallized or formed a new 
substance. (This, by the way, is like Tchekoff.) He does 
not overstate, he docs not "characterize." His specimens are 
[327] 



POETRY: J Magaz 



me of Vent 



not ptnoed to the paper. It is hardlj a delight in poCtJT,^ 
the ukc of poetry, that we get frofn him, but a sense of I 
His i> essentially the feeling of drama — tn volume, tbac l 
not on the surface. What we call "dramatic" todaf is a 
only a superficial oervous twitching. When Robert Fn 
pves us a man we get, as it weie, the shadow of his I 
lint ; his spiritual features are only gradually revealed, i 
rock might emerge from shadow ; but the man is never ^ 
oS or away from bis surrouadings. A. C. t 

WHAT WILL HE DO WITH IT? 



Rupert Brooke, vthmt collecltd Fttmt (John Line) ii to slistu 
sod yet lo line ■ monumetit to his iborl youog Hfc, has been honored 
■ignslly by Yale univerniy. Tb« Heory Honland memorial ptiie 
of $1,500, every Mcood jt*T awarded to "the cilii«n of any country 
for marked diitinctioo in literature, fine arti, 01 the idcnce of gov- 
emmetit," haa been awarded to Rupert Brooke. ExehAvft 

It used to be a saying that the only gtxid Indian was a 
dead Indian. Apparently that is the way it is with poets. 
Yet one can not help asking the ironical, fruitless question, 
"What good will this cash prize do Rupert Brooke? and k «v 
will it be conveyed to him?" 



[328] 



Pykal tVm Ht Do ffitk lit 



NOTES 

Sii Ribindranath Tagorc, whose Engliah veraiona o( h!i Ben- 
gali pocmi PoETRr had ihc honor of being ihe lirat to present a 
year before ihe Nobel Prize for Literature wa» ansrdcd to him, i» 
now on hi* way ro ihi» country to give a few lecture* under the 
niaoagement of the Pond Lyceum Bureau. The poet's own tranila- 
tioni of hit lyric and dramatic poem* {Giianlali, The GarJmtr, 
Chitra, ttt.) ate published by the Macmillan Co. 

Mr. Ezra Pound milt loon issue a new book of verse, Luitra, 
besides two works in prose — Nebli Playi of Japan and Tins Gtii' 

Mr. Harold Monro, who appears in PoETRr for the tirsi time, 
was Ihe editor of Poetry and Drama, the interesting English quar- 
terly now luspended because of the war, and the founder of the 
Poetry Bookshop, London, which has published man^ of the younger 
English poets, as well as their anthology, Georgian Vtrte. Mr. 
Monro Is the author of Judai. Before Datvit, Children of Love, and 
Treei, the Uit two being published by (he Poetry Bookshop. 

Mr. John Driokwater, of Birmingham, England, another of the 
Georgians, i< the author of Siaordi and Plovgkiharei, and Otton 
Paah will soon be published (Sidgwick k Jackson, Ltd., London). 

Mr. Winer Bynnefs latest hooks are The A'w H'arld and a free 
English version of Ipheginia in Taurii (ICennerley). Mr, William 
Griffith, of New York, will soon publish a book of poem*. Also 
Mr. T. R. Eliot, an Amciican poet resident abroad whom PoETltv 
introduced over a year ago. Mr. Louis Untermeyer, the well 
knnwn New York poet and critic, is the author of Challenge 
(Century Co.), and of the book of parodiea reviewed in this number. 

Mr. Adolf Wolfl, of New York, was introduced by Oltieri with 
a group of free-verse poems called Priion Weeii. Mr. John 
Miller, Jr., is a young Chicagoan. 

Mr. Eira Pound writes of his Homage to Q. S. F. Chriilianm, 
"T am quite well aware (hat certain lines have no particular rela- 
tion to the words or meaning of the original." 

Miss Margareie Miinsierberg informs u» that the poem, The 
Dead Child, by the late Madison Cawein, printed in Porrav last 
June, was not original but a (ranslation from the German of Kod- 
rad Ferdinand Meyer, the Swiss poet No one is to blame ai the 
poem was found and sent to us after the poet's death. Another 
version of the poem may be found in Miss Miinsterberg'i Harveit 
of German Verie. 

[329] 



^ 



POCTHf; I M€f€%im€ «/ Ferge 



9CCCS BECZXT 




/ 

Froc^ * Cm. 

fnae^kCM, 
Tk€ CkristmAs Trmd 



CKMrr F 



p ^^ 






Tke C 



Od€, 



Fert4, bf Uirnhrr^ 



WMlmr X. B 



Das G«pca k 

Das G«pca 



ft Col 



9urug in Bismk fertt, bv Rflbv^ Daita. 
f^mf, futures mmd !««#/, bv Robf 

FUin: 

fmmtt, M Nmj im F^mr AeU: 
Akr'MX, O. 

TA/ B^*k *f tkt Dmuc€, by Anold Genthe. Mhcfacll Knioerlcj 



George C Jacfaoo Ca^ 



[330] 



ill 



Mr. Reedy, who printed "The Spoon River 
Anthology," has made a new discovery. He 
writes in The Mirror: "But for the book 

Sea and Bay 

A Narrative of New England 

by 

CHARLES WHARTON STORK (The John Lane Co.) 

1 doubt if I should bave come (brough the period of iht 'Bermudl 
high.' Reading thii po«m I could see (he «»i — ihe dark, lilver- 
capped sea along rhe Maine coast, and hear ils muiic. He can tell 
a siofy In round, flexible, blanic verse without tiring hii leader, 
and when he breaks his narrative with a lyric he achieves the true 
lyric quality — paisagei of splendor — the end . , ■ is a sense of rest 
and peace and of a great beauty." 

Other critics, can and weit, have made the same discovery. 

Mr. W. G. Bratthwaite in a two-column review in the Bulan 
Traiutrifl lays: "A captivating link of episodes and situations 
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